Data Overload
by Pen to Paper Writer
Summary: The days bleed one into the next for ME's at the OCME's office. The heat is unbearable which raises tempers in the city. People are being murdered at an alarming rate. That is until many people are murdered in a similar way from a case long ago. Is there a connection or is something more happening that they don't know about? Something they can't stop?
1. Chapter 1

The alarm clock was set to go off at 5:15 this morning. As usual knowing that she had to be up in 15 minutes her internal body clock had woke her up before the alarm had sounded. She now lies in bed and thinks about her weekend and how all she did were domestic tasks around her apartment. Laundry, cleaning, and shopping were how most of her Sunday had been spent. She needed to get out and find activities that were fun to do. Every once and a while she had a girl's night out, but even that was getting predictable now. When her mind drifted to work, she desperately knew that she need time off. But her mind did drift back to work and she mentally went through all the cases that she had to deal with this morning. That's not to include anything that dropped while she was finishing up the four cases that were almost complete.

Alexis Castle was a godsend. She had applied for and was granted the internship at the ME's office and while she knew that the girl had the smarts to make it as an intern, she also knew that with the right training from a mentor she would become great at being a medical examiner. In time, she'd show her the right way to properly follow the procedures at the start of her training. And in the course of her first three months and after she had been accustomed to the field work, they would sit down and have a talk about her attending medical school. She would not push her into any school but she'd give her whatever information she needed to make an informed decision on what to do with being an ME as a career.

Glancing over at the clock she noticed that the alarm would be going off in two minutes. She turned off the alarm and got up out of bed. She winced the second her bare feet hit the hard, cold wooden floor. Buying an area rug would solve this but once again her time was stretched pretty thin these days.

Xx

Alexis was up and showered before the sun had even risen. She was way too eager to start her first day as an intern at the morgue. She had made her lunch, packed all of her signed official papers in her bag allowing her to become an intern to give to Lanie later and chose something to wear that would not prevent her from doing the tasks that she would be assigned. She checked her watch one last time gathered her things and started for the door not wanting to be late for her first day.

Xx

As soon as Lanie left her apartment she received a text from dispatch. She dreaded reading it, but upon opening it she was intrigued. The address was well known to every New Yorker in the city. The U.N. building. A body might have dropped and she would never take away from their loss but the U.N. it had to be a first for her. She realized that this was not in Kate's jurisdiction but she knew most of the detectives that worked there. Now she had the unpleasant task of giving Alexis the news that her day would be more of a rushed start, to say the least. She texted her the address so they could meet up there. She checked her watch and figured if it was a quarter of seven, she'd either be on the way or already at the OCME office by now. She was that eager and organized. After the text was sent the response was immediate. It simply said, _"just leaving the office, I'll meet you there in fifteen."_

Lanie smiled knowing that she was right. This would be Alexis' first case and by no means would she be able to participate in evidence gathering or determining the cause of death. This would come later, much later. For now, she'd catalog the victim's personal effects, note any items that lay close to the body that could be identified as being a part of the detective's investigation and tell her. As she made it to the coroner's van she wondered how long it would take her to adapt to her new internship.

Xx

Alexis wanted to do for Lanie what her father had been doing for Kate for years now. She hopped into a cab and gave the address to a bakery that had the best sticky buns in the city. They also had tea which she knew Lanie preferred over coffee. Arriving at the bakery she told the cabbie that she'd be right out and to wait for her. She ran in and placed the order for both of them and being there so early it was filled quickly. Back out to the cab, she gave the driver the address for the U.N. fifteen minutes later they were pulling up to the coroner's van. She tipped him gracefully along with the fare and thanked him for a safe ride. Taking her bag, she slung it over her shoulder, picked up the coffee and tea and left the cab. Walking over to where the van was, Lanie was nowhere to be found. She removed her ID from her bag and clipped it to her jacket lapel and started for the U.N. building. Seeing detectives from the 17th precinct working the area she knows that Lanie can't be that far away.

"There you are. What took you so long? Lanie asks as Alexis comes closer.

"I stopped for this along the way."

She holds out the bag of sticky buns and the tea for her. Hoping that she was right in getting her tea.

"Alexis! Why did you do this? Not that I don't appreciate it, but this is unnecessary. You keep your money where it belongs, in your purse."

"Lanie, it brightens your day and we all could use that to lift our mood. So, you know that I am given an allowance on a weekly basis, right?"

"Still, you don't need to go buying tea for me."

"I was stopping for myself, so what's the harm?"

Lanie can only shake her head in frustration knowing that it won't do any good to explain it to her again.

"So what do we have?" Alexis eagerly asked.

"Meet John Doe. ID, cash, and wallet missing and he was killed right here. Why do you think that is?"

"First the pooling of his blood has not been disturbed, meaning that he was killed right here and not somewhere else and dumped here later."

"Go on Alexis." Laine encouraged her.

"Roll him onto his right side for me please Lanie."

Lanie does so and Alexis notes the victims back. She thinks for a couple of seconds and then speaks.

Alexis points to the largest stab wound on the left side of the victim and gives her assessment.

"This wound here is located on the left side of the back, about 22 inches below the top of the head and 2 inches from the front of the body. After the edges are measured I think it looks to be 1-1/2 inches in length and is diagonally oriented. The posterior aspect is dull or flat, measuring close to 1/32 inch and the anterior aspect is pointed or tapered."

"The wound is through the skin, the subcutaneous tissue, and the intercostal musculature and it penetrates into the abdominal cavity through the 8th right intercostal space without striking the rib. The direction is left to right with no other angulation or deviation determined because of the absence of fixed reference points. I estimate the minimum total depth of penetration is about 3-4 inches deep enough to puncture his kidney."

"In my opinion, this is the fatal stab wound that punctured his kidney and eventually killed him. The other five stab wounds are superficial…." Alexis stops in an instant seeing the look on her friends face.

"Lanie?"

At first, Lanie is left speechless by the precise report she was just given by her intern. She lets the body roll back to its resting position. She thinks that she'll go far as an ME with what she just heard. To her, this looked and felt so familiar to her but she just can't place it. Then she remembers and shudders at what she's thinking now. Alexis had just described the exact way Kate's mother had been murdered. She looks up to see the realization dawn on Alexis' face, she'd realized it as well. "Lanie, is this what I think it is?"

 **A/N: This story will be updated as time permits. recent health issues will prevent a timely update frequency. I'm going to try to update every week with my other stories, but that might not be possible.**

 **P2P**


	2. Chapter 2

Lanie stood there stunned after hearing what Alexis had suggested. She herself was not sure what to think, but given the location of the body and the manner as to how he was murdered this can't be related to Kate's mother's case. It was long ago and this does have some differences. He had no ID or cash on his person, Kate's mom had not been robbed. He was left in a public place; her mom was left in a dark dirty alley. There were differences. But just to satisfy her curiosity she would look into her files back at her office, just to compare.

"Alexis, I'm not inclined to think that this murder had anything to do with a certain detective's mom. However, what we find out here at this crime scene never goes beyond me and you. I'm sure that she'll eventually hear about this, but this jurisdiction is not hers. It's the 17th's."

Alexis looks at the ME still trying to shake the chill that runs down her spine.

"Okay Lanie, I understand."

"Good girl. Now help me prepare him for his ride back to the morgue."

The rest of the morning goes about as they planned. Measurements are taken, pictures are snapped by the CSU team and there's a quick search for any other pertinent information. They retrieve a body bag and the gurney from the van and before they can bag the victim and leave the lead detective walks over to Lanie.

"Doctor Parish, a word please?"

"Of course detective." Lanie gets to her feet and walks over to the van with the detective.

"There's word on the street that this murder might be the start of a serial. Can you please check your records to see if there are any other murder victims that have met with the same fate?"

"Detective while you might think that this is the work of a serial, I can tell you from my recollections that this is an isolated case. And I'm sure that you know that there needs to be at least two more murders committed to classify this suspect as a serial killer, correct?"

"Doctor, this is not always the case. But for now, would you do me a favor and look into this hunch for me?"

"Yes, detective. Borough, city or state wide search? Lanie wondered.

"For now let's stay within the borough." The detective starts to walk away, but suddenly stops and turns back. "On second thought doctor, including all five boroughs would be better if you don't mind. And will you have your preliminary report completed within the hour?"

Lanie can only nod. She turns back to help Alexis. But as she does she's mumbling her displeasure under her breath _he's a rotten sorry excuse of a man!_

Lanie, not realizing how close she was to their victim looked up to see Alexis' approving grin.

"Doctor Parish, is something wrong?" She teases.

"You know there are times when interns should be seen and not heard, missy!" Lanie responds with a matching grin of her own and just like that they are back to being comfortable in their friendship.

Lanie zips up the body bag she and Alexis place the victim on the gurney and they roll him back to the van. Once he is secure in the cargo area the two women take their respective seats in the van. The ride is uneventful and they reach the morgue reversing the process to bring him to the cooler. He's in storage now and Lanie tells Alexis to meet her at the autopsy table where one of the last four cases from the prior week still lay.

Lanie decides to use one of the four cases from last week to show Alexis the procedure of completing a natural death autopsy. She gives to other ME's the task of completing two of the four still left.

"Alexis, do you have your paperwork to allow you to be here as an intern?"

"I do, it's in my bag. Do you want it now?"

"No sweetie, just get it and put it on my desk and come back here."

Alexis heads to her locker and pulls out the paperwork and leaves it on Lanie's desk.

"Okay, Alexis there are any signs that you can look for that can be really good indicators of why or how a person died from natural causes. Can you see any of these on Mrs. Bennett?"

Alexis studies the corpse and after thinking about her answer she looks up to Lanie.

"Actually, if Mrs. Bennett here died from natural causes, there would be no indicators of her demise from natural causes. I can tell you that just from looking at the obvious that she was a heavy smoker and was until the day she passed away."

Lanie just nods and they move onto the next and last case from last week. A John Doe that they are still waiting for an ID to come in on. Alexis follows carefully. Lanie pulls back the sheet and Alexis releases a small gasp.

"Okay sweetie, let's start on this John Doe and I'll show you what we need to do when someone was murdered comes to us."

"Okay." Alexis says and when Lanie looks over to her she seems to be a little green around the edges.

"Alexis, if you need to be sick, please don't do it into an open chest cavity."

"I'm fine, but can I have a minute before we start?"

"Sure. I'll get his file and reset the recorder."

Alexis is grateful for the reprieve. She wills her stomach to calm down so she can make it through this. By the time Lanie returns she's somewhat ready.

"Whenever we start an autopsy on a victim that's been involved in a homicide, there are a number of things we need to do before can actually start the autopsy. Most of this was done last week, but when we get someone who's been murdered, we first need to identify the body. When we do, the detective on the case makes the call to inform the next of kin. When they come down to make an identification the corpse is only revealed from the neck up, or if the family is reluctant to go near the actual body we have a picture to show them as an alternate plan."

"So, if we have a situation like John Doe here how do we tell the family?"

The detectives are given a set of prints to search for any missing persons. In the meantime, I will collect a DNA sample and send it to the lab. This is usually the best and most accurate way to identify a John or Jane Doe."

"Their DNA needs to be in the system for the tech to match sample, right?"

"Yes, without the base information in the system, we move on to other ways to give us an ID. Dental records are next. If this does not give us what we need, then we really need to go to work. They can also be identified with other physical information, such as illnesses, evidence of surgery, breaks, and fractures, and height and weight information."

"This seems to me that it would be frustrating and delay the solving of their case."

"It often does. Some corpses that we get are still unidentified. In cases like that, we take samples of anything the police might need in the future and bury the body in potter's field. Until this is confirmed that's where they stay."

The day goes on and before they know it it's just about quitting time. They were so involved in working they had never stopped for a lunch break. As Alexis opens the door to the loft, she finds it silent. Her dad must still be with Kate and her grams is most likely already out for the night. All she has the energy to do is pop something in the microwave for dinner, take a nice hot shower to remove the odor of death from her body, eat and then go to bed.

By the time Rick makes it back to the loft three hours later, he quietly opens her bedroom door and peeks in on her. He sees that she is sound asleep. He smiles easily to himself.


	3. Chapter 3

If Lanie was sure of one specific trait her intern had it was that she would be able to see more than just a crime scene when they arrived at one. Since they were able to be paired together two months ago by the chief ME, she had witnessed a mind that was able to piece together a motive for the cause of death for whoever they were assigned to pick up. It was kept between themselves and would never be shared with the detectives who worked the case, but to date, every one of her predictions had been accurate. Alexis had a sharp mind and it had helped her become very intuitive when assisting her with an autopsy.

"Lanie, …. Lanie?... Dr. Parish!"

"I'm sorry Alexis, what do you need?" Drawing her from her thoughts.

"John Doe's internal organs were weighed and examined for any deficiencies and they were all normal."

"Okay, Alexis. Wrap and bag him and place him into the drawer he was in. The city's sending over someone from the Department of Health and Human services to pick him up in a little while."

Alexis did as she was told. She covers him in the wrap with respect and then placed him back in the body bag. She's zipping up the bag and hears a metal clang and then nothing. She looks around the area she's in and there's nothing out of the ordinary. Only the cooler with the receiving area next to it separated by the soft plastic strips hanging between the rooms. Lanie did mention that the other ME was bringing in a body from a suicide that happened earlier. Just as she closed the door to the cooler, she felt a strange feeling come over her that she had never felt before. To her, it felt like a thousand pins and needles taking over her body and the hair at the nape of her neck was rising. She tried to shake it off but before she could her body was pulled back and a hand was angrily placed over her mouth.

"Say a word and it will be your last."

First, she wanted to react to the threat behind her, but she couldn't because whoever had a hold of her was making sure that she could not move from his hold. Alexis wanted to yell out and warn Lanie, but out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that she was not the only one being held against her will. The man (she guessed it was a man) kept her facing the cold storage locker and started to wrap her wrists in duct tape when he pulled her arms behind her. When he was finished with this he sat her down with so much force that her leg folded in underneath her and ended up in an awkward position. He pulled her legs out straight in front of her not caring in the least of the pain he had just caused by doing so and rolled the duct tape around her ankles interlocking them tightly together. His last responsibility was to place a spin of tape around her mouth and her head, stopping her from saying anything.

Lanie had just finished thinking about her intern when she heard her calling her. After she told her what to do with the John Doe's body, she resumed her notes for the body that she was currently working on. She was leaning over the corpse checking her dental work when she felt an arm around her throat. Automatically she tried to remove it, but the grip that was around her neck was like a vise. She was pulled up back into a standing position and her right hand was grabbed and put behind her back. Dropping her pen she tried to get free. Before she knew it her left hand met the same fate. She was bound by what sounded like duct tape being unrolled around her wrists. She was dragged away from the autopsy table and was forced to sit down against the wall of her office facing Alexis near the cooler. Her legs were then taped up and then her mouth received the same treatment. With their first mission completed, they moved onto their second objective.

Xx

They went around like they owned the place. The four of them knew too many details about the morgue and where everything was located. Their second phase was to secure the outside world from anyone who tried to get in. Honestly, it was quite simple if you thought about it, they were working in a basement. There were only two ways in or out. The entry doors across from the elevator, and the loading dock and each had a roll down steel door to secure the room with. The second of the men had dealt with the living people in the morgue working there they moved on. They rolled down the steel doors, locking them in place. Disabling and way of contacting anyone inside was next. Landlines were ripped from their jacks and tossed onto the floor the fax machine was disconnected as well. This office was the headquarters for the city's ME. Everything that was filed anywhere in the five boroughs was uploaded into the servers that were next to Lanie's office. They left that room alone for the time being. Instead, they had disabled any laptop and desktop that they saw, including personal property too. Lanie's and Alexis' cell phones were destroyed by being placed into the sink they filled with water.

Lanie took a chance to look over at Alexis and what she saw was a very frightened girl. She tilted her head and rolled her eyes to the right hoping Alexis would understand. When she noticed the gesture, she could only shrug her shoulders back not understanding her meaning. Lanie watched them as they efficiently cut them off from the outside world. She could not understand what anyone could want in a morgue, the only thing here were dead people. She became a little worried when she looked over at Alexis again who had a look on her face that she knew all too well. She was putting pieces together in her head. Lane started to shake her head immediately to stop her from doing anything of the sort. But all she could do was watch her as she watched them.

Xx

"That's funny!" Rick said as they were returning from yet another crime scene.

"Castle, I'm not playing twenty questions with you. What's so funny?" Kate asked.

"I tried to call Alexis so we could meet for lunch on her two-month anniversary as an intern, and all I get is her voicemail."

"Castle, you're celebrating her two-month anniversary as an intern? Why does this not surprise me?"

"Beckett, we made plans for today as we had for her first month anniversary. I know that she had made it a point to remember when I told her last night. She told me that Lanie said it was okay if I brought her to lunch to celebrate earlier this morning."

Kate rolled her eyes at him "You do know that she is very resolute in doing her job, right? She is probably declining your call because you are bothering her at work. A lot like you do to me!"

Rick just pocketed his phone and looked out at the city traffic in front of them knowing that she was probably right.


	4. Chapter 4

Kate and Rick had returned to the 12th and were quietly looking at the murder board while leaning on the edge of her desk. As she looked to her right she thought to herself that at least one of them was quiet. He had not stopped fidgeting for the last two hours. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore.

"Castle! What's with all the bouncing around?"

"Beckett, she's still not answering. Maybe something's wrong."

"Castle, she's an intern with the M. E. what's the most that could happen? She gets a vicious paper cut."

"Beckett, don't you find it bit strange? Alexis' phone never leaves her sight. She always answers, even if she's busy."

"Alright Castle, I'll put your mind at ease. I need to talk to Lanie about our case so I'll call her."

"Thanks, Beckett." Rick told her with kindness in his voice.

Beckett picked up her phone and dialed her best friend's number. It rang the programmed number of rings before it went to voicemail. Not yet discouraged she dialed the landline to the morgue and all that she heard was a busy signal. She looked over to Rick who was still studying the murder board and wondered if his feeling of dread had any weight to it.

"Detective Beckett, where are we with the case?"

The captain's interruption drew her from her thoughts and she hung up the phone and left to tell him what was going on with their case completely forgetting about Lanie and Alexis.

Xx

From what Alexis can tell by watching their movements they were not your run of the mill grave robbers. After they had disabled the outside world from any incoming or outgoing communication they had been in Lanie's office for the last thirty minutes. They were either looking for something by trying to access Lanie's computer or just really brainless enough to think they could come in here destroy the equipment and leave without being caught.

Lanie wanted to see what they were doing in her office. Twice she tried to move her body up against the front wall of her office to the window to see them. Each time their third partner pointed his gun at her and she slipped back down to the floor.

"Try doing that one more time and see what happens to you." He said as he placed his finger on the trigger of the gun pointed at her.

Alexis' eyes went wide and she was shaking her head pleading for Lanie not to do anything stupid. The movement from Lanie's office caught Alexis' eye. They were moving quickly out the office and the last man out slammed the door closed. The third man with the gun had moved over to where Alexis was and crouched down to her almost covering her in a protective move. She could smell the aftershave he was wearing and it's a fragrance she'd never forget.

Before she could make a move to get away, the two other men had taken her by her armpits and dragged her to the opposite wall where Alexis was and sat her down next to her. Then they both covered her, in the same protective manner, they had done with Alexis. When she looked over to Alexis with a confused look, a loud bang rocked her office. A split second after the bang the whole office was engulfed in a bright blue fireball. Fifteen seconds later the fire had burned itself out and from where she sat on the floor there was nothing left on the walls, or desk. Even the plastic light fixture had disappeared. It looked like her office was stripped of anything that wasn't bolted down.

The three men got up from their protective positions surrounding the two women and walked back to view the destruction. Each of them looked in at what remained and nodded in agreement. They walked single file into the main room that held the city's main servers.

Lanie looked at Alexis and could tell that she was shaken by what had just happened. Lanie nudged a little closer to her to offer some comfort. Alexis dropped her head onto her shoulder and she felt her lightly shaking, she knew she was crying.

Xx

Kate came out of the captain's office and the second she sat down at her desk, Esposito and Ryan were forcibly escorting a struggling suspect off the elevator that was swearing that he had no part in whatever it was they were dragging him in for. They passed in front of her desk and Castle recoiled from the smell of the suspect as he walked past the desk. Seconds later she responded as well but kept her expressions neutral to show Rick that he was acting like a baby.

"What do you want to do Beckett?"

"Castle we need to sit in on the interrogation that Ryan and Espo are going to conduct and see if our guy is a murder suspect or not."

"Yeah, there's that sorry."

"Hey what's wrong with you?"

"Beckett, it's almost quitting time and I have not heard a thing from Alexis all day. She always texts or calls me I have not talked to her since this morning and that's highly unusual even for her."

"Okay, let's get this interrogation done with and then we'll go to the morgue. This way you can see that everything is fine and she is hard at work with Lanie."

"Okay. Thanks, Kate."

She looked at him oddly. They never used first names but then again maybe he was really thankful and he wanted to show it."

"No problem Rick. Let's go and then we can talk to your daughter."

They both get up and head to the observation room to watch Ryan and Espo take apart their suspect's alibi. They are tag teaming the guy and it looks like they will be able to place him at the scene but Ryan goes a little further and bluffs about finding a weapon that has his prints all over it. After an hour and a half, the suspect can only drop his head and confirm that yes he had killed her but swears that it was an accident. They both look at each other knowing that he just confessed and Espo gives him a pad and pen asking him to write out what he had just told them. He does. Ryan turns to the glass and winks at Beckett knowing that she was watching and this case will be closed soon.

"Well Castle, another family will get the justice they are looking for."

"They really do this as good as we do huh Beckett?"

"Well maybe not as in sync as we are, but they get the job done."

"Very true. So, are we still heading down to see Lanie?"

"We are. I just need to add something to the report I noticed when Ryan and Espo were in there interrogating the suspect."

I'll wait by the elevator for you." Rick walks off while Kate writes her notes in the case file. She knows that he is far beyond anxious to find out about his daughter so she hurries with her thoughts on the report.

Entering the elevator they descend to the basement and the minute the doors open they smell something that's not normal. It's an odor that they're both unfamiliar with but they move cautiously towards the entrance. This has Kate on alert. They walk further out into the hallway across from the entry door and she sees that the plastic strips are not moving like they usually do when the door in opened up. Kate sees Rick start off in a run towards the door and she's too late to warn him that the roll up door is down closing them off from where Alexis and Lanie are. He hits the door head first and bounces off it ending up on the floor.

"Castle! Are you alright?" Kate asked.

"Not really, why is the door closed? There was no reason for it to be closed now."

Xx

The slam into the door tells the men that they have little time to get done what they came here for. The third man draws his gun and walks over to the roll-up door and just waits. He nods to the other men and they go back to work, with more of an urgency now that they know that someone wants to get in.

"I'm going to try calling her again Beckett. Maybe we can hear her phone inside." Rick dials Alexis' number and it connects, but they hear nothing on the other side. He ends the call.

"Kate, something's wrong. I can feel it."

Kate knows that he's right because she feels it too. She pulls out her phone and calls ESU and then her captain explaining what they know so far. In a short time, the hallway is filled with armed ESU members and they are trying to get through the ME's door.


	5. Chapter 5

Kate hopes that Rick hadn't done any bodily harm when he ran into the closed door. He hit the roll up door pretty hard. She knelt down to help sit him up and already he has a goose egg forming on the side of his forehead, but instead of sitting up he lays there trying to get his wits about him while still holding his head.

"Beckett, what the hell? That door should be open 24/7. Do you think they're okay in there?"

"I don't know Rick."

"What about the cameras? Can't we use them to see if they're okay?"

"Castle, I don't think we can. The ESU Captain just told me that whoever is in the morgue has disabled all communications in and out of the morgue, including the CCTV."

"So, we're blind out here, right?"

"Rick there's more…. the Captain also found out that there was a high reading of an incendiary device being detonated inside."

"Incendiary device?"

She could see the look in his eyes. He needed to be sure that his daughter was safe, but he was slowly losing it. She needed to get him back and focused on the situation. She was finally able to get him to sit up. She takes a hold of his upper arms holding him in place.

"Rick, listen to me. You need to focus. You're not doing her any good by thinking that you've already lost her because you haven't."

"Kate, I don't know what to do."

She knew he would become too emotional to help her because the love for his daughter would always come first and foremost. Knowing that they need to act fast, so she did the one thing that she would never do to him, ever. And the second she did it she hated herself for it.

All Rick could think of was that he had already lost his baby. He could only stare at the roll up door becoming more and more distant as he thought of the ways he lost her, but everything went blank when his head jerked painfully to the left. All he could see were stars with his closed eyes tightly. When he opened them, Kate was looking at him with the saddest eyes he had ever seen. He brought his hand up to the left side of his face and felt the heat transferring to the palm of his hand.

"Kate?"

"Rick, I'm so sorry! But I need you to be here with me. We need to save them together so I slapped you."

Rick looked at her and he could tell that she held regret in her eyes. He was losing it, and she was right in thinking he'd already lost his baby and this was not the way he should be thinking. He ran his hand through his hair and with a renewed sense of determination he got to his feet and pulled Kate away from the roll up door.

"Thank you, Kate."

Her response was drowned out by the ESU member who had started a K-12 saw. He was going to cut the roll-up door's track apart so they could get into the morgue.

Xx

Two of the men had come out of the server room and stood listening to the sounds as the saw started to cut through the door frame. They had counted on this and had planned for just this type of response if it was needed.

"We have less than three minutes at the most." The one man said to the other standing with him.

"I agree. Let's see if he's done."

The two men walk back into the server room and tell their partner that the that they have little room for errors.

Alexis and Lanie see the third man look up from his task and tell them something. Since they are sitting on the opposite side of the room they can't hear what he's saying.

"Make sure that we're ready to go. I don't want any indication left behind that can identify us. Scrub everything that we've been in contact with since we arrived. We're being paid a lot of cash for this job, and I plan on collecting."

The two men quickly get to work. In less than two minutes they have everything clean. The third man emerges from the server room and the three retrieve their backpacks and head for the loading dock to escape. Alexis and Lanie just look at each other in shock. Did they think that they were just going to waltz out of here undetected? She knows for a fact that there are at least five or more cops in the loading dock area that will put a stop to them. As they pass their bound hostages the leader says,

"It's been nice to know you doctor, but I'm afraid that we need to get going before it gets a little too hot in here."

He snickers as he turns to leave. Lanie again looks at Alexis and they know something will happen to cover their escape, they just don't know what it could be. The sound of the saw stops and then they hear a hammer striking the roll up door frame. They are concentrating so much on the front door that they forgot all about the loading dock door.

The flames are too hot for anyone to survive them. Just as the last strike of the hammer sounded and the frame for the door fell away, there was a bright flame that shot out on both sides of the door. At the indistinguishable second that happened the same type of flame blazed in the loading dock but only on a larger scale. If they were not sitting where they were they would have been burned to a crisp due to the flames coming through the plastic strips hanging down between the cold storage and the loading dock melting them instantly.

The flames burned out quickly, but not like they did when her office was destroyed. The crowbar that was prying the door from the frame drew their attention to the right.

"LANIE, ALEXIS! Are the two of you okay?"

Being bound with duct tape made it hard for them to answer but they tried anyway. All that they could do was scream against the tape, which could not have been heard by Kate. The rest of the door fell away and Beckett and Castle were the first ones through. They both scanned the morgue both ways before finding them on the floor. Kate runs over to them sliding to a stop on her knees. Two seconds later Rick is next to his daughter. They remove the tape around their mouths first.

"Thank you, Kate!"

"Lanie, who was in here and what did they want?"

"Kate, I have no idea who they were. But whoever they were they spent a lot of their time in the server room. Rick had freed his daughter and looked at what was left of Lanie's office. Turning back to her he asked,

"Lanie, what happened to your office?"

"Rick, whatever it was they used, well it was nothing that I've never seen before. The were in there for about a minute and then they came out, shut the door, protected us and then my office was obliterated. When it was done, all they did was get up and nod at each other without saying a word."

"Dad, they spent most of their time with the servers after they disabled the cameras, phones, and to cut us off completely they gave our cell phones a bath in the sink."

The ESC Captain comes into view and has more information for them to share.

"Detective Beckett, there was small and undetectable charge affixed to both doors. This charge is what generated the flames that almost took out the man I had there working to open the door."

"Is he okay?" Alexis asked.

"He was lucky. He had sensed something was going to give with the door and rolled out of the way thinking the door was going to fall on him. That move saved his life."

"My God! I'm glad he's okay."

"Kate let's get them free of this duct tape and get them out of here. Maybe we can see if there's anything that we can use to ID these guys." Rick said.

With nodding her agreement they free Lanie and Alexis. On the way out Rick sees both of their phones submerged in the sink.

"Alexis I don't know who's worse, you or me."

"What do you mean dad?"

"I think that you're catching up with me with the destroyed and damaged phone count."

"I really don't think so, you have a revolving account at the phone store. And I liked my phone."

Kate needs them to give her some more information on these guys. So she leads them back out to the elevator and back up to the homicide floor.

"Lanie, Alexis I'm going to need a lot more information on these guys. We'll need to do this while it's still fresh in your minds. I promise it won't take me that long."

"Kate, it's okay. I'm sure that Alexis has enough of a description of these guys to have a sketch artist complete a pretty good likeness. She was watching them the entire time. I could tell that her brain was working overtime to figure out what they were up to."

Alexis looks away with a blush rising on her cheeks. Rick notices and he's proud of her and shows it by drawing her into a sideways hug. The ESU Captain stops them from getting on the elevator.

"Detective, when you are finished with these two women, I'll need to speak to them for my report. Later will be fine if that's okay."

"Captain, I'll have them come back down here when I'm finished. On second thought, let me do you one better. When you are done with the clean up here please come up to the homicide floor and I can give you the use of our conference room. I think that it will be more comfortable there for you and them."

"Thank you, detective. I'll be up shortly."

Kate pressed the elevator button and it arrived. When they stepped on Lanie turned around and took one last look at her burnt out office wondering if her fern might have somehow survived, but she doubts it.

Kate wanted to separate them so they could each tell her what had happened. But after thinking about it, this was not a murder investigation. She just wanted to catch these guys. She looked at her best friend and her partner's daughter and decided to let them talk about what they saw together.


	6. Chapter 6

Alexis and Lanie see now that trying to remember what a suspect looked like for a police description and a sketch artist was not as easy as they thought it would be. After about twenty minutes Lanie had complained about the ringing in her ears when they took a short break from giving their descriptions, so Castle insisted that they were both checked out by a doctor. His thinking was that if Lanie had this problem, maybe Alexis did too. After seeing the doctor though, he explained that what she and Alexis were experiencing was normal and would fade in time. If it did not they were to return. But for now, they were in good health. While Kate and Rick sat at her desk they watched Lanie and Alexis talking to the sketch artist to nail down a good likeness of the three men who had infiltrated the morgue. There were times when their hands were doing most of the talking but overall it looked like they were in agreement about the description of the men given by the nods of the artist.

Rick taps Kate's shoulder two minutes later and points to the now approaching ME and her intern.

"So, how did it go?" Rick asked his daughter.

"I think that was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life!" Alexis told him.

"Amen to that!" Lanie added.

Kate wanting to get going on this investigation and wants to know what they were able to tell the sketch artist.

"Kate, he will be out in a second. He's finishing up the last touches on the guys we described."

"Okay, what can the two of you tell me?"

"They were very organized. They've done something like this before or have been a part of something like this in the past." Alexis told Kate.

"They never said that much either, which was kind of weird. I mean these guys barely said ten words between them."

"Maybe they were U.S trained military." Rick suggested.

"They might have been military, but not our military." Alexis added.

"Why do you think that Alexis?" Kate asked.

"When they did talk they spoke with a foreign accent. If I had to guess I'd say it was probably German. Plus, I've seen our soldiers in settings like this and these guys had a totally different attitude towards what they were doing. Nothing like the way our military would have acted." Alexis said.

"You know what? I think I'll wait for the artist to give me the sketches. Can you tell me why they destroyed your office, Lanie?"

"I think that it was a test for whatever they were doing in the main server room. They even crouched over us so we would not get injured when the fire started."

"Was there a bang or a boom when it went off?"

"Come to think about it, there was neither. It just erupted in a very large fireball and vaporized everything in my office except the plastic light fixture cover."

"Okay, can you estimate how much time they spent in the server room?" Kate asked.

Lanie and Alexis talked it out before answering.

"About fifteen minutes, give or take."

"And they each had a black backpack, right?"

"Yes." They responded together.

"They had the first firebomb in one of them and they also had the tools they needed to access the servers in another one."

The sketch artist walked over to Kates's desk and handed her the copies of the computerized sketches.

"I have sent 1PP the originals. Will there be anything else Detective Beckett?"

"No, that's all. Thanks, Charlie."

"Castle, when Espo gets back tell him about the possible military theory. Have Ryan look over the precincts security cameras leading to and from the loading dock and the adjacent alley to see if he can find anything."

Rick looks over at her wondering why she is telling him to do all this.

"Beckett? Why can't you tell them yourself?"

"Because Castle, I'll be taking Lanie and Alexis home. They have just experienced a very traumatic situation, it's late and they need to get some sleep."

"Oh no, you don't Kate!" Lanie sternly said.

"Lanie, listen…"

"Nothing doing Kate Beckett! Me and my intern are here for the duration. If you're here, then so are we."

"Lanie…"

"Don't you Lanie me! We're both staying so get that thought out of your mind."

"Beckett, it looks like you've been outvoted."

Rick said. But thought better of his second comment when he noticed her scowl and accompanying eye roll.

Ryan and Espo returned from the scene and told Lanie and Alexis that any of their personal effects that were in her office were lost.

"Espo, Castle has a theory. Want to try to run it down with him?"

"Sure, what's he thinking?"

"You both know I'm sitting right here, right?"

"Yeah, I can see you. So, what's your theory?" Espo asked.

Rick got up and walked over to Espo's desk while cursing under his breath and he started to tell him what he thought might be going on.

"Kevin, can you check out the cameras that face the rear entrance of the morgue's loading dock? I think that they are all independent of the 12th's internal cameras and might give us a shot of them leaving."

"Okay, Kate. I'll be in the tech room. Give me about twenty."

Having given the boys and Castle something to do to get this case going in a forward direction it gave her some time to review the sketch that Charlie had just given her. Alexis and Lanie can only sit there quietly as she works. They watch the people moving at a quick pace around the bullpen and start to realize that maybe going home wasn't such a bad idea after all. After about thirty minutes, Alexis gently pokes Lanie in the ribs nodding towards Kate, Lanie speaks.

"Okay Kate, you win! Please take us home." She asked in a small voice.

Kate could only grin. She still had her head buried in the sketch and wondered how long they would last before asking to be taken home.

"Ladies, let's go."

Xx

In an industrial area on a deserted street somewhere in Fair Lawn New Jersey, a non-descriptive car with tinted windows rolls to a stop in front of a rundown single-family house that had long been since abandoned. Three men exit the car and make a quick walk to the rear of the house. They enter and head straight for the basement. At the bottom of the staircase, there is an electronic keypad and the first man at the door enters the code and the door opens. Stepping in, they look around to make sure that they are here first, not wanting to be surprised by the sight of the man who'd wanted them to carry out this mission. They are alone, or at least they think they are.

The chair swivels so fast that they have no time to draw their weapons from their holsters. After the muffled sounds he hears, the leader of the group looks first to his left then to his right he sees his companions drop where they stood both with a bullet from a silenced Walther PPQ M2 SD between their eyes. He smartly removes his hand from the grip of his own weapon letting his arm fall to his side.

"Just so we're clear… I can and will end your life with the first wrong answer, understood?"

"Yes." The man replied.

"Tell me something Fredric, did everything go as planned?"

Fredric thinks about the mission and he knows that things went off smoothly.

"Y-yes why do you ask?" He answers not liking where this line of questions is going.

"It seems that not everything went as we planned, did it?"

"It did. There were no witnesses the cameras were disabled from the start. They have no proof."

"Ahh, but you see that's where you're wrong!"

Fredric thinks back to the job and as he works it through his mind he realizes that the man in front of him is right.

"So, now do you want to withdraw your response from earlier and give me the correct answer?"

"Yes. We spared the hostages."

"You spared the hostages." The man parrots.

"We caught them by surprise and I could not rightfully do what needed to be done."

"I hired you for your ruthlessness, your instinct, and discretion." The man just sits there shaking his head.  
"We'll revisit this matter later. Now have you uploaded the Zombie cookie as instructed within the city's servers?"

"Yes. After getting past their firewalls and other security we had no issues."

"I need the thumb drive back please."

Fredric turns and retrieves his backpack to return the thumb drive. When he turns around and looks up with the drive still in his hand he is met with a silenced Walther pointed directly at him. He hesitates for a second then steps forward before placing the drive into the man's hand.

"So, now that the job is complete can I get paid now?"

"Yes, but there is one other bit of business we need to address first."

Fredric knows exactly what business he's referring to.

"You were hired to complete a job. In my eyes that was not finished. And while you might have disabled anything that electronically caught an image of you, you left two witnesses, very alive I might add, to identify you and you're now recently deceased friends over there. You were supposed to kill anyone who could ID you or your team."

"They were too scared to talk, I'll bet they won't."

"Are you sure about this? Willing to bet your life on it even?"

"Yes. I believe that they were scared shitless and they would never talk out of fear."

The man rises out of the chair and walks to a laptop computer on a desk. "Fredric just give me a second."

Fredric waits as he types a couple of keys on the laptop and fifteen seconds later the laser printer comes to life. It prints out a couple of sheets and the man takes them and returns back to sit back in the chair. He studies the pages and Fredric starts to sweat.

"Fredric, I think that your faith has been misplaced."

The man turns the sheet of paper to face him and he gasps for air with what he sees on the page before him.

"You do know what these images mean, don't you? It means that they talked to the police."

Before Fredric has the time to voice his answer, a 9mm round is penetrating his skull. The man watches as he drops to the floor with a confused look on his face then meets his friends in a heap.

"Fredric, it was great working with you. You just saved me a hundred grand!" The man said to an empty room.


	7. Chapter 7

"Beckett!" Ryan called out in an exaggerated breath.

"Ryan, what's wrong?"

"I found something and sent you a copy of what I found on the security cam. Check your email."

Kate opens her inbox and clicks on the video file. Castle, Espo, and Ryan gather around her desk to watch the scene as it unfolds in front of them.

What they see is the three men leaving the loading dock area of the morgue only now they are wearing hoods covering up their faces. The man in front of the group raises his hand and presses a button that looks like it's on a small remote detonator. Then, less than three seconds later there's an all-encompassing bright light, then a very large fireball. Within 15 seconds the flames quickly die out. When the camera recovers from the bright flash of light to start recording the scene again the men are nowhere to be found. Still watching the recording, a minute later three cops run out in pursuit with weapons drawn only to find that their suspects are no longer in the area.

Kate looks up to Castle and the boys. Then she states the obvious.

"Okay, what I don't get is how these guys were able to walk past three of New York City's finest and not be confronted by them."

Rick has an outlandish and crazy theory so he tells them what he's thinking.

"I think I know why they were able to get away without being caught. The bright flash and explosion that we just saw as they left the building was probably what they used inside the loading dock area. Maybe not the same type of explosion that we just watched on the video but maybe this one was just a blinding light instead. When it blinded the officers guarding their escape route, maybe it gave them enough time to get away without being seen."

"You know as crazy as that seems I think it's the reason they were able to get away. Beckett says.

"It's too much of a coincidence not to be the truth. It's just too bad that the inside loading dock cameras were disabled, then maybe we could we could have seen what happened in there." Ryan adds.

"Judging from the hoods that were hiding their faces we don't have a good view of them before they put them on? Do we?" Espo asked.

Ryan shakes his head side to side and tells them,

"They knew the cameras were facing the loading dock so they put their hoods on before they left the building."

"So, we're basically back to square one. They were smart and didn't leave any clues, fibers, or fingerprints at the scene and even if they did they probably wiped down anything they came in contact with while they were there" Castle said.

They all nodded yes.

"Okay, time to switch gears. Ryan, they spent a lot of time in the server room. I'm pretty sure that they had a reason to be in there. Since Lanie and Alexis had told us they had spent a large chunk of their time in that room see if there's any way that they could have hacked the OCME system."

"Beckett that's going to take a while. If I had some clue at what they were trying to do in the server room maybe I can narrow it down but I'm in the dark here."

"Kev, I know that I'm asking a lot from you, but do the best you can."

Ryan leaves to head back to the tech room and wonders what they were up to. He'll have to go to the server room itself downstairs to see what they were really up to. There's only so much you can do by remotely accessing the servers from the tech room.

As Beckett watches Ryan walk away she knows that he is up against the impossible. But she knows that he is the one man who can find out what they were doing.

Espo, do you still have friends in BDU?

"I do. Why?" He answers her but with a confused look.

"Try to contact your friend and see if he would come to the crime scene to look at the type of incendiary device that was used in Lanie's office. Maybe your friend can find out where it came from or who made it."

"You got it, Beckett."

Xx

Jeremiah Jones stood looking at the three incompetent dead men who lie in a pile on his basement floor. It's so hard to find good help these days. He thought that hiring mercenaries from Europe would be a better plan of action. If they did have the misfortune of being caught he knew that their identities would never be found out. Because mercs from Europe are basically ghosts. They had no prints on file, no background to search and he knew for a fact that the FBI doesn't keep the strictest of tabs on the locations of European mercs. It seems that they're too busy with the terrorists in the Middle East right now. As the events of today's op were completely botched it tells him that he should have just stayed with the mercs from the good old US of A. He can't believe that their leader thought that they weren't going to talk. He didn't know what he was thinking because the ME works in the same building as the detectives do. What did he think was going to happen?

He holsters his gun and he grabbed the arms of the last man he killed. He drags him over to the roll of plastic that's been laid out and wraps him in it. He repeats the process with the other two idiots and soon they are ready to go. He will take them to a New Jersey landfill near Secaucus and by the time they find them there won't be much left to identify after the rats get through with them.

He leaves the house in Fairlawn around 2 a.m. and by the time 5 a.m. rolls around he's pulling back in Fair Lawn only now he's three bodies lighter. The Zombie cookie he had the idiots install was an all access pass for the city's medical examiners. But that's not the real reason he had this installed in the main city servers. The real reason is that it gives him access to any NYPD files, without leaving any trace that he was actually in their system. The Zombie Cookie was a work of art. They would never find any trace of it in their system. And on the off-chance that they did find anything and they were to delete it, it would wipe clean all of that user's information on that particular hard drive. He had done his homework. What he knew was that on one network there could be up to ten to fifteen computers tied together to that one user who tried to delete the cookie. Once they tried to delete the Zombie Cookie it would wipe out the hard drives on all of those computers simultaneously. Then the Zombie Cookie would simply reinstall itself on the servers again. No firewalls or security software that had been installed on the network would be able to withstand the Zombie Cookies intrusion and following hard drive corruption. But it also gave him the second reason that he had this installed. The technical advances that the NYPD had in place are able to store anything relating to a case. This would give him access to active cases, cold cases, and any personnel file he decided to pull up, payroll files, medical files or whatever else the NYPD had stored on their system. He could watch the progress of an active case or review personnel files from any member of the NYPD active or retired. He could also alter these files to suit his needs. It's the one thing he was looking forward to the most.


	8. Chapter 8

As Kevin walked out of the bullpen in the direction of the tech room. He knew that these men had to be well funded in order to just walk into the morgue and take it over without the fear of being caught. He kept wondering why the city had used the morgue to install the city's servers for the NYPD alongside the OCME's. He thought that they wanted to save money in the budget and place everything there instead of making a separate site to house them. Now with the recent intrusion, he wondered if they were going to reconsider their options. He entered the tech room were Tori was hunched over her computer screen.

"Hey, Tori." He said softly not to frighten her.

"Oh hey, Detective Ryan." She replied.

"Listen if you're not doing anything important we need to scan the city's servers to see if there was a virus or program installed in it."

"Okay, I'm only wrapping up street cam footage from a hit and run earlier in the week. Just give me a couple of minutes."

"Okay. But just be warned that we will be living here for the next couple of hours. Beckett wants us to find out what they installed and she doesn't want to see us until we have something solid to tell her." He sadly tells her.

Her shoulders slump at the news, so much for going home early tonight. "I figured as much. Let me finish this and then we can get started."

Xx

Esposito is leaning up against a street light pole standing on the corner of 43rd Street and Broadway. On one side the street, he sees his current employer's Times Square substation and on the other he sees his past employer's place of business. The Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Center. He thinks back to his last mission as a sniper and remembers the day that he saved the members of a 12 man Delta Force unit that was under heavy fire. He remedied that by taking out four of the seven insurgents. He's waiting here because he had called his BDU/military friend to get any information he could give him on the incendiary devices that were detonated in the morgue. He told his friend that he'd meet him at eleven am and no later. He checks his watch once again and it's 10:59 and 48 seconds. As he watches the time slip away and then he is overshadowed by a very large presence. When his watch hits 11:00 am, he looks up and sees his very tall friend standing right in front of him.

"Hey Dillon, how's things?"

"You know Javi, the more things change, the more they stay the same." Dillon replies.

"Don't I know it."

"So I'd bet you're here wanting some information about the device that was detonated in your morgue, right?"

He knows that Dillon always has an ear to the ground and it not really that surprised that he already knows why he's here.

"Yeah, I am. What can you tell me about it, or who used it?"

"What I can tell you that these men are ghosts. Mercs from Europe who are not that easy to find. I'd bet my last dollar that they are already out of the country and probably lying on a beach in some non-extradition country by now."

"Yeah, I'd expected that. So, what about this device?"

Dillon becomes despondent after he asks his question. He has news, but not anything he will say in any way will be good for him to hear.

"Javi, you need to listen to me. This device was the creation of the Russian Federation. They had developed it, produced it and used it. And when they used it, I mean that they "tested" it on people who were forced to contend with its effects. Twenty-two men, women, and children were locked up in a non-ventilated 10-foot by 10-foot room. The device was detonated below them with the fallout being forced upward through one-way vents in the floor. They studied the effects of the fallout on everybody in the room. The first twenty-four hours were routine. No one in there had suffered any ill effects from the fallout."

"Okay, so they were in the clear then, right?" Javi asks.

"You'd think they were but the next twenty-four hours proved to be fatal for the children and the elderly. The device had an uncalculated side effect on everybody in the room. The fallout from the way the device ignited and the way it burned the chemicals gave off a toxic gas that caused the respiratory systems in the young and old to constrict and fail. They all died from lack of oxygen to their brains and other vital organs."

Javi's thoughts now become his worst nightmare. Lanie and Alexis were in close proximity to two of these devices when they were set off. He really hates to ask what he's going to ask next.

"Dillon, the -the others made it through without any health issues right?"

"Javi, I wish I had better news for you. Of the twenty-two who were locked up all eight children under twenty and six people over the age of sixty perished. The remaining eight men and women died a slow and agonizing death. They never were able to see their loved ones, they never fulfilled their dreams. Javi, they died right there in that room."

"Dillon, Lanie and a friend of mine were exposed to then effects of this device. Please tell me that they won't become victims from this as well."

"Javi, I'd love to tell you that everything will be alright, but this device they built was made from chemicals that were banned around the world and when the chemicals were combined together the doctors had no defense against how it attacks their respiratory and circulation systems. But the only advice I can give you is that you need to make them comfortable and wait. From the video that was smuggled out, there will be a seventy-two-hour period before the symptoms start to display in the patient. After that, it's only a matter of time before their systems start to shut down one by one."

"There's nothing that can be done to help them?"

"No my friend, I'm so sorry. Not to be morbid but how old is this friend of yours?"

Javi has to think before he answers him.

"She'll be seventeen in a month and a half."

"Well, I hate to say this but she _will_ perish before Lanie will if that's any consolation for you. And that's considering that they are in perfect health. Your friend is too young to last longer than Lanie. Her lungs are not developed completely even at seventeen. If you can get her to the hospital and make her comfortable at least she'll have family close by when she goes. Lanie, on the other hand, won't fare that much better. Less than 12 hours after your friend dies, she'll follow the same path."

"God Damnit! Dillon, while I appreciate what you've told me there's nothing that can be done for them?"

"Javi, I have been hearing talk from the Baltic states that scientists are working on something, but they are far from putting it into a serum that will do any good for them. From what I've heard it's still six months away at the least from being tested on rodents."

Javi pats Dillon on his shoulder and turns to head back to the twelfth.

Xx

Kevin and Tori have done all they can do remotely in the tech room without being in the server room. Right now, they have exhausted any way to find this virus or program within the server. And then he thinks that since they were not able to detect any such intrusion, was there really one in the first place? Ryan has his laptop tucked under his arm and exits the elevator into the basement. He throws a nod to the two uniforms who are guarding the entrance to the morgue. It's still an active crime scene twenty hours after the event.

He sets up in the server room by accessing the NYPD side of the server wirelessly. That's the only advantage of being in the room right next to the server. Upstairs he needed to connect to a myriad of cables to gain access. Once he has entered the proper passwords and is in the system, he performs a scan for any unwanted viruses. It takes about three minutes to complete the scan, and he notices nothing that's unusual. Next, he checks each individual hard drive for anything not belonging to those storage systems. This is going to take a while so while that's in progress he scans the OCME side of the server and waits.


	9. Chapter 9

He is startled by the shrieking of his cell phone. It's so tedious doing this search that he almost fell asleep standing up. He was daydreaming about Jenny and their talk last night. If he were to admit it he'd love to have a baby with her, but she was more than hesitant about the topic, not totally denying it, but not agreeing to it either. Maybe they could talk again tonight when he got home. Sliding the accept button on his phone he heard Tori yelling at someone. At first, he thought it was him she was yelling at until he heard her tell one of the uniforms to get her a file from the archives.

"Detective Ryan, stop the scan!" Tori yelled out.

"Why Tori? What's the problem?"

"Just stop it and then I'll talk you through it. I think I found something."

Kevin stops the scan and waits as he hears papers shuffling around in the background.

Wasting no time Tori gives him the following directions.

"Kevin, I need you to go into the settings menu, and then click on the Resource Monitor then click on the network tab."

Kevin does as she asked and he tells her that he's done.

"Okay, now do you see the six graphs on the right?"

"I do."

"Now, take a look at the spikes on the Network graph. Most of them are spiking up to 100 Kbps right?"

"Yes, they are. What am I looking for?"

"Look at the bottom of the graph and tell me what you see."

Kevin looks at the bottom of the graph screen and as the screen traverses from right to left that there are a couple of spikes that are not that high. Somewhere around the 60 to 75 Kbps range. As he looks closer he sees a bright pink spike, well not really a spike but more like a bump at the bottom of the small screen.

"There are some spikes but they're not that high on up the graph."

"What else?"

"Scrolling at the bottom of the graph barely visible are pink little spikes so small that they almost don't register on the graph."

"Good, that's the intrusion. Now, move up to the CPU graph and tell me what you see there."

Kevin looks at the screen and sees only the green spikes on the graph.

"I see only the green spikes, no pink ones at all."

"Good, so the intrusion is sending information at a snail's pace. This is good. Look at the Disc graph and tell me the KB rate per second is."

"It ranges from 156 to 322 KB per second."

"Alright now look to the left on the Disc menu and find System C drive NFTS Master File Table and tell me what the read and write rates are as well as what the I/O priorities are."

"Well the read rate is 4, the write rate is between 205 to 467. The I/O priority is saying that it's shadowed."

"Okay, that's why there was never a chance to find this virus/program. It's buried deep within the net. It was never meant to be found. Which leads me to believe that there are many fail safes built into it. Listen, I'm sending down another laptop and repeat the process I just told you. Then we are going to try to access this virus to see if we can remove it."

"Okay, Tori. If this laptop connected in any way to the network upstairs? Because if this virus is as bad as you say it is then we don't want to corrupt out systems."

"No, this one is safe. I scrubbed everything off the drive myself."

What Tori was unaware of was that a hard drive on a night detective's desk computer had failed. He went to request a replacement and the tech had given him the laptop she was going to give Kevin to use. The tech looked over the laptop after powering it up and checking it out. Finding that the laptop was not in their network and knowing that the detective that needed the network access active to share his progress on the computer with his fellow detectives, so he added back to the network. The laptop was returned by the end of the week two weeks ago.

Xx

Javi did not know what the hell to do. With this unsettling information, he wanted to tell Lanie what was going on. He felt that that was his priority since they were friends. He really needed to admit how his feelings for her had progressed, but there never seemed to be the right moment for talking to her. But the more he thought about it he also needed to tell Castle and Alexis too. Rick was his friend he shouldn't keep something this big from them. Deciding that he would tell neither for now, he headed back to the 12th to give Beckett the news that would ultimately tear them all apart.

When Espo got back he found Rick in his seat playing something on his phone while sympathetically listening to Kate who had an extremely red face trying to get a word in edgewise with Interpol but was getting nowhere. Since Lanie and Alexis were brought home to rest, Javi thought that this time was the most opportune time to break the news to them.

Kate had been on the phone with Interpol in Lyon, France. For the last twenty minutes, she was getting nothing but double talk from them. While they had a suspected mercenary list of suspects, they were in no way letting the City of New York see it, let alone acknowledge its existence. When Beckett finished with her call, Javi somberly faced the inevitable.

"Beckett, where's Ryan?"

Castle looked over to him sensing the unsteady tone in his voice. Something was up.

"Espo, he's down in the morgue trying to find out if there was actually a virus planted in the city's main servers."

His expression fell a little before he started talking.

"We have a problem."

"I know Espo, I'm trying to find these three guys and all I'm coming up with is dead ends."

"No Kate. This is something more serious than finding these men."

Kate just stood there. He almost never used her first name and as she looked at his face whatever he had to say was beyond serious.

"Javi, what is it?" She asked as she sat down in her chair.

"It involves Lanie and Alexis."

Rick's phone slipped out of his hand and hit the floor with a crash, the glass screen shattering into pieces all over the floor at the mention of his daughter's name.

"My military BDU friend gave me some information on the devices that were detonated in the morgue. These devices were made in the Russian Federation not that long ago and the chemicals that they made them with had been on a banned list that was hazardous to mankind. While the flames and initial flashover were practically harmless for them, the chemical reaction that produced the flashover created a gas from the combined mixture of these chemicals. This gas attacks their respiratory systems and over the time span of 72 hours it will be fatal causing total internal organs to shut down. The first symptoms showing up by the forty-eighth hour."

Rick is shocked and heartbroken and can't find a voice for the words that are on the tip of his tongue. It's not until Beckett says something that he can start to think structured thoughts again.

"Javi, tell me there's a cure for this or some kind of antidote at least!"

He could only drop his head and she knew that there was no hope for them.

"Espo, tell me that this is some crazy dream. Hell, even the stuff I can come up with doesn't come close to being this reality!

"Rick, the scientists in Europe are working on an antidote….."

Rick stops him from finishing by talking over him.

"That's great, when can we have it shipped over?"

"Rick, I wasn't finished. While they are working on an antidote, they're still about six months from testing it on lab rats."

Rick's face drops when he hears this. Looks quietly at Beckett and without a word picks up his shattered phone up off the floor, rises and turned to leave never once saying a thing. Javi and Kate watch as he heads to the elevator and once the door opens he never looks back. Her first instinct is to run after him, because let's face it finding out that your child has less than 36 hours to live puts an urgency to see her as soon as he can.

She stands pushing her chair back a little too hard and it hits the file cabinet behind her. she grabs her jacket and is just about to tell Javi to look into the antidote when her desk phone rings.

In an aggravated tone she grabs the receiver and says "Beckett."

The desk sergeant downstairs has a possible lead for her on the takeover of the morgue and she needs to take the call that he's going to transfer to her. She agrees and the call is forwarded.

"This is Detective Beckett, I was told that you have some information for me about a case that I'm investigating."

The voice on the other end is stressed at first but answers.

"I think I do. There's something that I think you should really see."

"Where are you?"

I'm the foreman for a very large waste management company in Secaucus, New Jersey. We've found three men shot in the head execution style in one of our garbage piles getting ready to be shipped out on a barge."

What makes you think that these men have anything to do with my open case?"

"Well for starters all three are wearing military type clothes."

"That's all? They could be anybody. I'm not sure how you know about my case but I think that you should call the Secaucus P.D. and report this to them."

"Detective you need to listen to me. I'm sure that these men were a part of the break-in at your morgue. I read about it in the morning paper. I am from Dresden Germany. I was in the Army. These men have a distinct tattoo identifying the unit that they were with."

"Can you describe it for me?"

"All three men have a GSG9 tattoo on their upper arms."

"GSG? Can you hold on a second?"

"Sure."

"Espo do you have any idea who the GSG9 is?"

"Yeah, they're the equivalent of the Army's Rangers. Elite special police. Most of them are ex-military."

Kate returns to the caller.

"We'll be right there."

Kate really wanted to stop by Castle's, but this was a promising lead and she needed to go check out and find out if it was related to their case.


	10. Chapter 10

If she was able to do what she wanted to do, there would be no question in her mind. She would go to him and give him the support that he needed. But after the call she had just received she needed to, no, she wanted to be able to bring him something that would give him some answers so Alexis could the help that she so desperately needed. This would be some way for her to give him little hope and she knew that if they found a clue the case would break wide open. All it would take is for each of the pieces to all fit together. She gave a look to Espo and he knew exactly what she was thinking he only said two words to her. "Let's go!"

By the time they arrived at the garbage pile that towered over them, the Secaucus police had already closed off the area and had cruisers blocking their path in. They pulled up to the first car that was stopping them and the cop's car window went down as did Kate's. She withdrew her shield from her waist band and was about to flash it to him when he simply raised his hand and waved them in.

They drove further in and now realized that city sanitation trucks were off at a different pile dumping the city's garbage. She had never known where they brought it but now she does. Espo's voice next to her said,

"I always wondered where they dumped the trash."

They were always in tune like they knew what the other was thinking before they voiced the words. She knew that it was something that she shared with Rick and loved it because their connection was much stronger. They pulled up and parked alongside an unmarked black Secaucus police detective's car and got out. They surveyed the scene marked out by the yellow POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS tape. When an overweight, balding, older detective looked up from his inspection of the bodies as they approached, she knew that there would be difficulties from the start. From the looks of it, he was almost done. It was just the way he looked at her with a determination that screamed: "back off from my crime scene".

"I'm Detective Beckett and this is Detective Esposito NYPD 12th precinct." Kate said cutting off any pleasantries.

The detective looked away and then back to see if she was pulling his leg because she was a knockout. Seeing the unit they arrived in he looked back and said,

"Detective's, while your drive all the way out here might have been refreshing for you I have to admit it was a waste of your time. I will thank you not to take another step further in to possibly contaminate my crime scene."

Instead of losing her control she took a quick look at the bodies from where she stood. In the ten seconds that she had looked, she noticed a lot and was going to use it to her advantage.

"Detective, I'm sure that we will be able to assist you in finding out who did this and why."

"Detective Bucket, is it? Let me let you in a little secret. I have been to many crime scenes. This is not my first rodeo. And to be honest with you I know that I have more experience in my little finger than the two of you have combined."

"I am so glad that you see yourself this way. But answer me this, if you have all this experience under your belt when are you going to going to start doing your job?"

Javi just lets out a small snicker.

"Detective, I am doing my job! How dare you accuse me of not doing it?"

"That's easy. Do you see those bodies over there?"

"Yes, I do and that's why I'm here. Now please leave me alone so I can finish up with the scene." The detective stooped back down and to finish with his layout of the crime scene.

"Okay, then I guess since you have this all under control, I know that you'll be sure to note the GSW's were not a standard 9mm or a .45 caliber round."

Kate knew he was hooked now all she had to do is reel him in.

"Oh yeah, Miss Bigshot! What makes you say that?"

"So, you're admitting that you need our help?"

The detective mumbles something she couldn't hear. And looks to the pair again.

I'm not saying that I need your help, but what are you talking about?"

"The GSW's to each of these men have muzzle burns. If I may?" Kate points to the men and the detective can only nod. She and Javi slip under the police tape and they all start walking over to the bodies. Kate takes out her pen to use as a pointer.

"See these powder burns here?" Kate points to the body's head where the round entered. "These burns were caused by a suppressor. I'll bet my shield that the type of suppressor used was attached to a Walther Q5 Match 9mm."

"Right, and how do you come to this conclusion detective?" The older detective asks with an edge to his voice.

"Do you see the burn patterns here and here?"

"So what? Those are burns from the contact shot. Whoever shot him was up close and personal."

"He was. But most powder burns from a bullet shot from a silenced weapon leave a specific pattern. This pattern is from a Sidewinder 9mm silencer made by YHM. They are usually exclusive to Glocks, but with the size of the hole drilled in this guy's head, he was shot with a Walther."

"Impressive. How did you know?" He asked changing his tone.

Espo takes over. "We have seen cases like this before. While the powder burns are not always a good indicator to the weapon used, this silencer used here, leaves a star pattern. This coupled with the Walther leaves a certain pattern. The Walther was modified to fit the silencer. High-end work. The silencer itself is about $550.00, but the custom work it took to adapt it to the Walther was expensive. Whoever killed these guys has cash and a lot of it."

"Oh." The detective says.

"And there's more detective." Kate tells him.

"There is?"

"Yes. These three men were killed somewhere else and dumped here. Rigor mortis has set in long ago. If I had to guess I'd say about five hours at least. But that needs to be determined by your ME."

Maybe he was wrong about them. But he still wanted to know why the NYPD was here and what these murders had to do with them.

"Detective, why are these men so important to you and the NYPD? I know that there is something else other than these bodies that brought you out here."

Kate looked to Javi. And he nodded back.

"We have reason to believe that these three men were responsible for a crime at the 12th precinct's morgue. After the men had executed this crime, they used two incendiary devices to cover their escape. This device will  
kill anyone that's close to its detonation."

"So, I guess there was someone? Someone who was exposed to this?"

"Two someone's in fact." Kate replies sadly.

"Detective, I'm sorry to have judged you before I knew the facts. Please have at it. Just check in with me before you leave."

"Thank you, detective…?"

"Seavers. Jack Seavers." Seavers extends his hand to shake Kate and Javi's hand.

"We will Detective Seavers. And we won't be long."

With that said Kate and Javi go to work. A short time and a set of cell phone pictures they check back in with Detective Seavers.

"Detective Beckett, can I ask you something?"

"Sure. What is it?"

"These someone's you know, are they close to you?"

"I love both of them with all my heart Detective Seavers."

Kate and Javi head back to their car and drive back to the city to see if these men can tell them anything that can give them a new direction.

Xx

If Rick could fly he'd be doing it. Only now he has to settle for a NYC taxi in the afternoon rush. It's only 12:45 and he sees no end to this traffic that's in front of him. While he sits in the slow moving traffic his thoughts go back to Javi's statement and when Kate called out for him as he rushed away. He should have told her that he needed to get to Alexis, but his mind went blank after Javi's news. His only duty was to get back to the loft where he would break the news to his daughter….

Alexis sits on the loveseat in the living room. She was not up for sleeping when she got back home but against her will, her eyes closed and she slept for about three hours. Waking close to one o'clock her stomach started to grumble as if she had not eaten in days. As she rose and walked to the kitchen to find something to eat each step she took her breath became labored like she could not get enough air in her lungs. She turned back to see that she had only traveled less than fifteen feet to the counter and she started to feel nauseous and light headed. The last thing she thinks about before everything going black is Lanie…

 **A/N: Chapter updates for Ye Olde Book Shop and Silent Retreat will be later today. Next week there will be no posting for chapters because I will be on vacation.**

 **P2P**


	11. Chapter 11

He got off the elevator and headed to the loft dreading what he was going to tell his daughter. He did not want to show his fears that she would become a causality from the exposure of the flashover in the morgue, so standing at the door to the loft he shook away all of the information he had stored away in his head from Espo and cleared his mind. Raising his hand to unlock the door he heard nothing that would give him the indication that Alexis was home. He knew that after her ordeal that she'd be exhausted. So, he chalked it up to think that maybe she was asleep in her room and finished his motions to unlock the front door. As he steps into the loft there is a calm around the space. It's usually hectic and noisy even when she's here by herself. He scanned the kitchen area and the great room to no avail. He had taken a couple of steps into the loft and stopped to listen. Nothing. He heard nothing at all. Deciding that she must have gone to sleep, he walked to his office. Just as he was about to turn and enter, he looked to his left. There, alongside the end of the couch hidden from view lays his daughter, unconscious. He dropped his keys to the floor and rushed to be by her side kneeling as he drops down beside her. Knowing not to roll her over onto her back he checked her for a pulse. Finding a barely weak one he gently shook her shoulders calling her name. Thinking quickly he dialed 911.

Xx

Kate and Espo left the landfill in Secaucus and drove back to the 12th. The ride was silent each of them thinking about what they needed to do when they got back to the city. For him, it was a way to find out what INTERPOL had on these guys, something to do something to get some results other than just sitting on his hands. He hoped that this is what she wanted him to do. He would stay on the phone for hours knowing that if he found a lead on these guys he could help Lanie and Alexis.

Kate felt her eyes blur with tears a little thinking about what could happen to her best friend. She needed to call her or better yet go and see her. She knew that her boss gave Lanie the next two days off and she gladly took them not knowing then the impact of what being in the morgue would do to her. Perlmutter would oversee her open cases for now. The ride up to their floor is again silent. They know that saying anything would break whatever concentration they had. As they both head to their desks, she has a thought forming in her head. She sits at her desk and thinks it over for a little. Deciding that Lanie is a top priority she turns to Javi.

"Javi, do me a favor?"

He looks over to her and is waiting for her to get her thoughts together.

"Run down these three guys and get their complete military history and anything that you can find on them before that. If you are unable to get that, then call INTERPOL and work on them to see if you can get a lead on how or what they were up to last as mercs. Javi, I want these guys to pay."

Esposito just turns away from her and sits down at his desk to get something started.

Kate has Ryan working with Tori and Espo is running down leads. Now is a great time to go and see her best friend and tell her what is going on and how it will possibly change her life. She gets her things together and looks over to Javi giving him an all-knowing wink. He nods in his response knowing that what she will be doing next will be very hard for the both of them. He can only hope that he'll make some kind of progress while she's gone.

Rick listened intently as the 911 operator gave him instructions. First, he opened the door to the loft, then went back to Alexis and she asked if her pulse and was weak or strong and was she breathing with full breaths or shallow ones. He told her that her pulse was weak and her breathing was shallow. He asked if he could roll her over and the dispatcher told him to leave her right where she was and not to move her. Then behind him, the EMT's rolled in a stretcher and they took the phone from him.

"This is Foss, FDNY EMT we're on scene. Who is this?"

"Foss this is 911 dispatcher 5629. I assume that you'll be taking over the patients care from this point on?"

"Affirmative. Keep any recordings you have because this one looks like we'll need them." Foss hangs up the phone without another word.

"Mr. Castle, what happened here?"

"I really have no clue to explain how she ended up here. But I can tell you that she was exposed to chemicals that will weaken her respiratory system and cause it to shut down within 48 hours and it's been 10 hours already." Rick tells them as he looks at his watch.

"Paul, we don't have any time to waste. Mr. Castle, we are going to transport your daughter to Columbia. When we do we are going to intubate her to help her breathing en route and give her some steroids the help her do the same. Since we have no room on the rig you'll need to meet us there. She's in good hands, I promise."

"Please go and get her the help she needs."

The EMT's leave and race over to Columbia. Rick is trying, but failing to follow behind losing them in the afternoon city traffic. He needs to text Kate and let her know what happened to his baby. He will do that once he gets to the waiting room after he sees what the doctors tell him about his daughter.

The doctors are at a loss. They have sent out Alexis for every test imaginable and have come up empty. It's not until her father arrives and asked about her condition when they start putting some of the clues together. They find an avenue of tests that might be promising with the research that they already have compiled on her condition they leave the ER and head back to the archives to compare case studies done in the past.

Kate hates to knock on the door. But reluctantly she does. On the other side, she hears little that would indicate Lanie's presence within. She has the spare key Lanie gave her years ago and waits to use it thinking that after she knocks one more time she'll use it. Finding that no one moves inside she draws the key out and unlocks both deadbolt and lock. She steps in and then she hears the whisper of her friend letting out a breath from the couch. She walks over to her and sees that she's fast asleep. But she knows Lanie and she'd never sleep through the insistent knocking and her opening the front door locks without waking up. She really hates to wake her seeing that she's in such a peaceful state but she has news and she needs to know what she found out. She gently takes a hold of her shoulder and nudges her a little while calling her name gently.

"Lanes…can you open your eyes for me please?"

Kate gets nothing in return. She nudges her a little harder now, her voice coming out with a little more force.

"Lanie, come on girl open up those bright beautiful eyes for me."

Lanie starts to slowly open her eyes. Her lids are sluggish to respond and her command for them to stay open falters. She tries again. From inside the crack of her eye lids that gives her the ability to see again, she sees a pair of black dress pants. She tries to process who is here with her because when she laid down to catch a few winks of sleep, her apartment was empty.

"Lanie, are you with me?" Kate asks when her eyes stay open for longer than a second.

"Kate? What are you doing here?" She at least now recognizes the voice attached to the black pants now.

"Hey, Lanes! There have been a couple of developments with the case at the morgue since I've seen you last. Lanie, I have some news."

Lanie struggles to take in a breath before she tries to get up from the position she is on the couch, the instant she does she can feel her lungs fighting to expand inside of her chest but she can only take in a small amount of air before she exhales what she tried to inhale. Pushing up herself into a sitting position she eyes her friend with a little skepticism. She quickly catalogs her body, her mind searching for the reason she can't pull in a full lung of air without feeling pain and a lot of pressure. When she can find no rational reason for this to happen she just brushes it off thinking that she's just exhausted and looks at Kate.

"Lanie, there is some news from the case you need to know about and I'm afraid it's not good news."

She searches her friends face for the look she knows that's associated with her playing a joke on her. But as the second's tick onward, all she can see is how serious she is with the statement she just gave her.

"What news Kate?"

Kate takes a deep breath in, holds it for a second and slowly lets it out hoping to get through what she has to say quickly.

"When you and Alexis were in the morgue and the incendiary device they used to destroy everything in your office and again when those bozo's made their escape, you were exposed to a toxic and deadly chemical."

Lanie looks at her surprised at the news she just heard. Her fear is not that of her well-being, but of her young intern. Needing to know more she asks.

"Kate what about Alexis? Is she okay?"

"Lanie, I'm not sure. I haven't heard from Rick since earlier this morning. But the news is actually not that much better for her, in fact … it's worse."

Lanie visibly shakes at the thought that the young girl could be in a worse predicament than herself.

Quickly adding up the fact that Kate is here and with the news that she's just been given she has a feeling where the rest of the talk will go.

"Let me guess whatever we were exposed to in the morgue attacks the respiratory system first?"

"Yeah, that's about the whole of it. I'm so sorry Lanie. I wish I had better news."

"Kate, what happens as this progresses forward?"

"According to Espo's military contact this mixture of chemicals breaks down your breathing and within 48 hours you are not able to take in any air. It basically strangles you internally."

Lanie thinks about this for a minute and is sure she has a solution.

"Kate, there has to be an antidote, right? I mean more for Alexis' than for me."

Kate knew her friend would be so selfless with her own health thinking only about someone else.

"Lanie since these two chemicals were banned from production in the former Soviet Union, and they never bothered to develop an antidote. Lanie that's not the worst of it! Since this is a chemical was banned for the harm it would cause the people exposed to it, it attacks the young and elderly with more aggression." Kate waits for Lanie to put it all together. When she does she only says one word….

"Alexis!"

All Kate can do is nod regrettably back at her.


	12. Chapter 12

Jeremiah Jones pinches the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb trying to relieve the tension behind his eyes. He'd been researching the NYPD's active cases for any mention of his now three dead mercs for the last three hours. After finding no reports of their involvement in the OCME debacle, he instead searched the active case files for the 12th precinct's homicide team that was oddly enough lead by a female detective by the name of Beckett. He found that they were at a standstill with nothing but their bodies being found in New Jersey.

He abandoned his search temporarily in lieu of some better research. Before the night was over he would know what made her team tick. There were three sworn detectives and one civilian consultant. After he skims all four members files he decides to start with the civilian consultant's history first. Richard Castle. His net worth puts him in the top 20 richest men in the United States. Holdings include a house in Northampton, a loft in So-Ho, a bar in Chelsea, another house in Key West, and a 10-unit apartment building on the East side. During his pairing with the female detective for book research, he has written two N.Y. Times best sellers. He has arrests for public indecency, stealing an NYPD police horse, tampering with files during an active NYPD ongoing investigation. He has been in some sticky situations as well. A shootout at a witness's home, a dirty bomb that was disarmed by him and the detective, almost lost his life in a botched bank robbery and was targeted by a serial killer while being accused of murder. He has been married twice and has a 16-year-old daughter. He'll get back to him later. He pulls out the next file and reads on. Javier Esposito. Ex-Special Forces. He'd guess a Ranger by the length of his Army service record quite possibly a sniper. Honorably discharged and recruited by the NYPD in 2000. Holds the rank of detective second grade. Numerous awards for valor, police combat award, four Awards of Commendation, and a pistol Firearms Proficiency Bar. Previous commands in the Bronx, Queens and currently at the 12th precinct. Kevin Ryan. He's new to the 12th homicide department with six years of service. Joined the NYPD right after graduating high school. Worked in narcotics and vice. Married with one child on the way.

Jeremiah pulls up the last record. He decided to take a short nap before getting into this file. He gets up moves to the bedroom and lies down.

Xx

"Kate where is Alexis?" Lanie desperately asked.

"Lanie, I haven't talked to Rick since he left around noon. Why?"

"Kate, according to what you just told me this lethal mix of chemicals will do so much more damage to her than it will for me. We need to get to Rick's loft."

"Lanie you're not going to make it through this either. Within 48 hours you will have the same symptoms that she might have now."

"Kate, just get me there! Wherever there is."

"Let me call him see where he is now."

Kate dials Rick's number and waits impatiently. What seems like forever is in reality only four rings.

"Castle." He answers.

"Rick, it's Kate where are you right now?"

"Kate thank god you called. I had to rush Alexis to Columbia. I found her unconscious in the loft about two hours ago barely breathing and her pulse was weak. Why?"

"No time to explain now. Lanie and I will be there as soon as we can."

"Again I ask why?" Rick was really confused now.

"Rick just trust me on this! Don't leave the hospital."

"Alright, Kate. I'll see you when you get here."

After the call, she thinks that he sounded like he was in a fishbowl. His voice echoed when he spoke.

When the call ends and all he can do is wonder why she want's to see him.

"Kate, he's at Columbia?"

"Yeah. Are you ready to go?"

Lanie nods. And then they are fighting midtown traffic heading north to Columbia. It takes them about thirty minutes but they get there and park in the ER's parking spot reserved for the NYPD.

"I'm looking for Richard Castle. Kate asks the nurse at the ER nurses station.

"I'm afraid that he can't see anyone now. I'm sorry."

"Why in the hell not? Listen I'm an NYPD detective and I need to see him right now!"

"Listen, Detective, I don't care what you do or where you're from. Richard and Alexis Castle are under quarantine. No one in or out. Now is there anything else you need?"

"There is, point me to where he is and I'll be out of your hair!"

Knowing that she won't take no for an answer the nurse points towards two sets of double doors and tells her "Isolation unit 3B." Then she returns to her work without even looking up at Kate.

Lanie and Kate are running down the hall and are seen by the doctor that is treating Alexis. He turns to his colleague and gives him a look. They both leave the office they are in and are quickly running after the pair of women.

"Rick, Alexis! Where are you?" Kate calls out.

Rick moves towards the door that's sealed. Kate can hardly hear him when he yells at her. They both stop and look to the glass doors they heard the sound from.

"Rick? Why are you in quarantine?"

Almost at a shout, he replies. "They seem to think that Alexis is contagious. Her lungs are filling up with water and she's having trouble breathing now."

"Rick, how long has she been like this?" Lanie asked through the heavy glass doors all the time watching Alexis.

"For about the last four hours now and it's only getting worse. They are trying to research old cases that are similar to her symptoms but they have nothing so far."

"Where is her doctor?"

"He's right behind you!"

Kate and Lanie turn quickly to see an older man nearing about sixty. She has seen him on occasion here at the hospital, but never stopped to talk to him.

"Doctor, I'm Dr. Lanie Parish and this is my close friend detective Kate Beckett. I was hoping that you had a diagnosis or your patient in quarantine."

Dr. Parish, I'm not sure what we are up against here. It's something that I've never seen before. She presents with the symptoms of pneumonia, but from what I can tell she seems to be deteriorating faster than with someone who has pneumonia. So, we isolated her and her father because we are sure that whatever she has is airborne in nature."

"Doctor…" Lanie hints.

"I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. I'm doctor Young and this is my colleague Dr. Allen."

They all shake hands and look towards the room Alexis is in.

"Dr. Young, she is not contagious. She was exposed to a mixture of toxic chemicals that produced a vapor that if inhaled will break down the respiratory system within the first 12 hours of inhaling it. It will affect the young and elderly at first resulting in the same symptoms."

"What is the end result? Is there an antidote?" He asked

"The end result is death. And as far as I know, there is no antidote known to exist."

Xx

Kevin and Tori have been working nonstop for the last six hours trying to isolate the virus, but each time they come close the come up with a dead end. They are hot, frustrated and hungry. He decided to take the laptop that he thinks was scrubbed clean after its last use, but what he doesn't know is that it was reprogrammed and issued to a night shift detective. He has a thought about trying to trap the virus and walks over to where Tori sits in the back of the server room to ask her if she thinks it will work. He explains the idea to her and she thinks that it is worth the risk.

He initiates a program that seeks out unknown viruses. It will take about fifteen minutes for it to scan the servers. He waits and watches as it seeks. Fifteen minutes later it has found three viruses. The first two are non-threatening and he deletes them. The third he opens to see if he can find out who created it or who wrote it. As Tori walks to him she looks down just as he is about to hit the enter button. By the time she can stop him she's too late and he hits the enter button. That's when all hell breaks loose in the server room….


	13. Chapter 13

By the time she can even think about starting to do something about stopping the shutdown or overload, Kevin is up and moving towards the main servers trying to sever the connection from the laptop and the server. The room lights up in a large white flame and extinguishes as soon as it ignites. Then the room goes completely dark. Really everything goes dark around them. Prehistoric dark. He calls out to Tori and he hears her yell back to him. As he gets to where her voice was the emergency lighting comes on, dim but it's on. He sees her and then they are once again plunged back into darkness.

He pulls out his cell phone and all he gets is the back light. He has no signal on the phone. He flips to the flashlight app and the room is now flooded with light.

"Tori, cells have no signal. Even though we are in the morgue we should have at least two bars."

"I have a smart phone, let me see if I can get to the net on mine."

She opens her phone and opens the NYPD website and the message that comes up is one that she hated to see.

"The NYPD website is dark Kevin."

"Try Google."

She opens the Google app and finds the same thing.

"Nothing there. Either we knocked out the entire web or hopefully just the NYPD information network."

"Tori, this was no accident! Whoever wrote this program or virus had a specific undertaking in mind. Whoever it is wanted us to be in the dark."

"I thought you said that that laptop was clean?"

"It was! I scrubbed it clean when I checked it in less than a week ago."

"Could it have been reissued to someone else and you didn't know about it?"

"For now we'll go on that until we can find out what really happened with it."

"Let's get out of here and back upstairs to see how badly we've been hit."

Xx

Esposito was on the phone with INTERPOL and reading his monitor about the information on the three mercs that were murdered in the landfill. The lead detective in Secaucus had just emailed him a report on his findings, then the screen went dark along with the lights on the homicide floor. He lifted his desk phone away from his ear and all he heard was a buzzing and then the line went dead. Fearing the worst, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and swiped the slide arrow to the right. The screen came alive and he noticed that there was no signal on it at all. He opened his email app and composed a short message to his mother and hit send. What he saw in return, it had him knowing that the shit had really hit the fan.

Ryan and Tori had run up the stairs from the morgue since the elevator was void of power. As he reached Espo's desk and out of breath he said only two words "How bad?"

"Disaster! Everything is down. Phones, power, security measures and the net."

"Javi, go downstairs and outside, walk about 5 blocks from the precinct and see if you can reacquire the signal for both your phone and the net." Ryan urged him.

Espo was up and out of his chair running to the stairs.

Xx

Rick looked on as Dr. Young had entered the sealed off room. He noticed Kate and Lanie standing to the side away from the decontamination area entry point. As he slipped into the room through the plastic barrier where he and Alexis were, he looked up at him through his respirator.

"Mr. Castle what I'm going to do now goes against every protocol in my training"

Rick looked over to the doctor and he unzipped the top part of his Tyvek suit. Then he removed his respirator from his head and after about thirty seconds let out a breath and began to breathe normally. When he spoke next, he was more understandable.

"Mr. Castle, Dr. Parish advised me that you and your daughter are not contagious. For my sake, I hope that she's correct. I need to take a sample of your daughter's blood and run a specific test now that we have a better understanding of what your daughter was exposed to. If this test shows me the results that I am hoping to find, I will have you and your daughter moved to the ICU unit and out of quarantine. The results should take me about an hour to get. If they are what I hope they are there might be a route we can travel to get her the help she needs."

"Thank you, doctor Young. Can I help you in any way?"

"You might be able to Mr. Castle. I will keep you updated."

The doctor takes the tube full of Alexis' blood and exits the room and stops to talk to Dr. Allen on the way out. He takes the blood sample and rushes off. Dr. Young then approaches Lanie and talks with her briefly and when they are finished she follows him as he walks in the opposite direction.

Rick looks to Alexis and then turns to Kate and stares at her through the plastic and glass barriers. She gives him a look of hope, but he won't trust it until he has positive proof from Dr. Young that Alexis will make it through this in one piece. He watches as Kate as she pulls out her phone to make a call.

Kate dials the 12th hoping to talk to Espo to see how far he got on the phone with INTERPOL but the line results in a busy signal. She tries again and the outcome is the same. She moves closer to Rick's body near the barrier. She types in the NYPD's website and a message pops up on her phone that makes her fear what might have happened can be the truth. The message comes up and she tilts the face of the phone to Rick so he can see it. When he reads it he wonders why she is showing her web browser open with the message displayed that says, "The website you have entered is not connected to the internet check your settings and retry."

"Kate? What's going on?"

"Rick, I think something that Ryan was working on caused this. I am heading back to the 12th to see what's going on. I'll be back soon." She runs towards the elevstor.

"KATE…" she never heard him through the barrier and he watched the elevator swallow her up. He turned back to Alexis and to him, it seemed like her condition was getting worse. A lot worse. She was rasping instead of breathing the way she was five minutes ago. It looked like it was too painful for her to even draw in a half of a breath. He noticed her eyes flicker just a bit and then they opened slowly.

She tries to speak but all that comes out is a whisper.

"Daddy…. Help …. Me…. please!"

He strains to hear what she is saying to him. He gently brushes away the sweat that covers her forehead and wants to do every goddamned thing he can think of to help her but he can see it in his eyes, she knows that there is nothing to be done. Sure, she had so much more in her life to accomplish but her father is here next to her and that's all she really needs now, then her eyes closed slowly.

Xx

Espo is running back up the stairs and almost runs into Kate knocking her over in the process. He quickly moves past her to see Ryan standing at his own desk talking to Tori. Kate follows behind.

"Ryan, the signal is dead for about ten blocks away from the precinct. But after you get past that my phone had a full signal and a connection to the net."

"Kevin, what caused this?" Kate asked.

"There were three viruses that were embedded in the server on the NYPD side. When I deleted the two harmless ones that left the larger of the three and when I tried to delete it all this happened. Tori thinks that the first two were like a warning for the main virus to get ready to activate, and when I did that and tried to delete the last one it shut everything down."

"How bad is this?"

"Somewhere someone has total control of the server remotely. It will be a while before we get that control back."

"Tell me what they have control of."

"Everything! They have employee's personnel files and any personal information for any employee, arrest reports, evidence files, confidential informant lists, payroll, medical, performance evals, the names of all of our undercover officers and what they are currently doing now. This is a sick new twist on Pandora's box."

"Kev, you need to get IT down here and work with them on finding a solution. We are at a standstill without any way to investigate or research this case. Try and think of anything that could get us back online." Kate suggests.

"Kate, I'll see what I can do, but I can't guarantee anything." Ryan turns back to the stairway to drive over to 1PP where IT is located.

"Javi, how far did you get before all this happened?" Kate asks.

"I was on the phone with INTERPOL and they were going to send me over a list of possible locations of the active mercs they had on file but now that won't happen. Detective Seavers from Secaucus sent me his completed report he filed on the murder scene. But now that's gone too. So, I guess you can say that I didn't get that far at all."

"See what you can do, meet up with Tori and find a way to get that report drive back there if you have to. But maybe she'll have some luck…

Xx

Dr. Young is looking through a microscope at the sample of Alexis Castle's blood he does not like what he sees. when he pulls away from the microscope he invites his colleague Dr. Allen and he studies the sample. he gasps as he looks but recovers quickly. He pulls away and looks at Dr. Young and his head is already nodding up and down.

"How can this be? The mutation is regenerating itself becoming self-sufficient."

"I really can't believe it. It's taking over her body with every split of the cell. Soon it will start with her respiratory system and then will start attacking her cardio vascular system."

"I'm grateful that we only need to deal with one patient who has this going on inside of her." Dr. Allen comments.

"I would be grateful as well, but she's not the only one. There will be one more very soon."

"What do you mean?"

"Dr. Parish has the same symptoms, but at this point they are dormant. But that too I fear will be changing shortly."

"Dr. Young, that's it!" The younger doctor exclaims.

"What are you talking about? What's it?"

"We can use Dr. Parish's blood to slow the effects of this mutation in Ms. Castle. The new filtered white and red blood cells drawn from Dr. Parish will attack the mutating cells in Ms. Castle. This will buy us maybe a day or two so we can dig deeper into a cure for this, there has to be a cure out there somewhere."

"You know Dr. Allen that just might be what we're looking for. let's get Dr. Parish back into the lab and we can explain to her what's going on."


	14. Chapter 14

Dr. Young takes Lanie in with him to the lab and tells her what he thinks about doing with her processed blood sample he just withdrew from her arm as they walk.

"Dr. Parish, I think that by taking your blood sample and "cleaning" it up to remove any traces of this disease there might be a chance to extend Ms. Castle's life. I'm not sure that this will be a cure, but if my theory is correct it will be able to give her a few more days then we can dig into finding an answer for her treatment. I won't lose anyone to this terrible disease."

"Dr. Young, how long will it take to clean up my sample?" Lanie hopefully asks.

"By the time I get this to the lab, maybe about four hours. So, before lunch. Dr. Parish, I know that you are a pathologist but you're still a doctor. Could you go and check on her and tell me about her condition whether it has progressed or not?"

"Yes, I will Dr. Young. I'll be back soon."

Lanie leaves the doctor and heads back up to Alexis' new room. She was moved to ICU about an hour ago when her doctor found out that she's not contagious. Arriving at the floor she checks the patient room assignment board behind the nurses that are completing updates on patients charts and turns in the direction of her room. The first thing she sees is Rick dabbing the sweat off of her body with a cool wet cloth. She's drenched so much that the hospital gown she's wearing is almost transparent.

"Rick, any changes?" She asks.

"No. She's about the same from when her doctor left over two hours ago. She's having nightmares though that much is obvious."

"That's to be expected. Her body is going through a lot right now."

They both look at the teenager hoping that she can be saved. He really can't think anything less because if he does, he's given up on her.

"Rick, this might be a little premature to say but I think that Dr. Young might be able to give Alexis a few more days."

Rick almost gives himself whiplash when he turns to face her with a questioning look. She explains what the doctor is trying to attempt and then he's looking so happy at this news. But she then sees his face frown when she tells him that this might not be able to do anything at all. But she has faith in the doctor's ability.

Time slowly moves on and Lanie returned back to Rick after she updated Dr. Young. She's falling asleep in the chair by the side of Alexis' bed and wakes suddenly when Dr.'s Young and Allen rush in.

"Dr. Parish, Mr. Castle we have finished with the sample and are ready to introduce it into Ms. Castle. Could you kindly step away from the bed please?" Dr. Young requests.

They both do and meet at the foot of her bed and watch his every move. The process only takes a few seconds to administer the cleaned blood and then once it's done the waiting game begins once again. Both doctors leave and head back to the lab.

Xx

Jerimiah Jones stares intently at the computer screen in front of him. He knew that the cops would attempt to disable his Zombie cookie and everything played out the way it was supposed to. Their system was down through out the whole network. Essentially, they were in the dark and that gave him the opportunity to catch up on a little casual reading. He'd been about ten pages into this detective Beckett's personnel file and wondered what this writer had meant to her. Since he had Carte Blanche within their system he had read the personal notes from her late Captain Notes that were not accessible to anyone but the Captain. And there was no fear of that ever happening again. He was thinking that by the notes that were left by her Captain that his thoughts were that there was more to Castle than just his researching her cases and NYPD procedure for his books. No, there was something more there. And he would find out what it was. He read more about her history and he knew that they were more than partners. He had gone behind her back and looked into her mother's murder and she called him out on it threatening to end their partnership. But he told her that he had new information and she needed to see what he had found. She did and then Jeremiah had realized two items of importance, she was a driven person. Someone whom he did not want to have on his tail and her mother's case was never solved. She was the driving force that kept the case alive, well her and the writer.

He sat back in his chair and thought how he could use this information to his benefit. He knew that if he dangled a carrot in front of her he'd get her off his back so he decided to do just that. His network of assets runs into places that she could only dream about getting a lead for her mother's case. He picked up the phone and made a call.

"Jones here, I need everything and I mean everything about Johanna Beckett. Give me something that her daughter can't possibly know about her. Oh, and something else, get me everything on the names Richard Alexander Rodgers, or Richard Edgar Castle. Spare no cost going into files that no one has access to."

"Yes, sir." The line goes dead.

He starts to read again and gets to when the detective was shot. The case was unsolved and still is. He makes a mental note to look into this himself. He keeps reading and finds out that her new Captain and the detective don't really see eye to eye. The Captain is a by the book former IA detective and he knows that looking into her file would be entertaining and a diversion but it's not what he needs to do now. He shuts down the computer with the thought of returning to it later. Now he needed to do a little sightseeing. First stop would be the 12th and then 1PP. He'd know by now that they were working feverishly to find out what the hell happened with their network. It would be months before they could even run a plate number or a history of arrests on a suspect.

Xx

Kate Is watching in awe as the 12th tries to get back up on their feet. She had realized that a majority of their work here relied on computers and it was their way of life, they had become too dependent on them. But with technology, as it is there was only one way to go… forward. Since the computer network was still down the officers and detectives reverted back to older ways. Everything that was usually done by a computer was now entered by hand on paper. Esposito had finally given up on walking back and forth more than eight blocks from the precinct to make a cell phone call. He was able to ask the detective Seavers in Secaucus to print him out his copy of the crime scene that he had filed. He told him that he would be over within the hour. Just before he had hung up, Seavers told him that if he didn't get the first one he sent him via email, that he'd send it again. Javi told him that the NYPD was crippled by a virus and the whole network was down. The drive was a quick one. He had the report and Seavers conversation floats back in his head.

 _"Detective, are you telling me that the NYPD is in the completely in the dark? That there is someone who can do just about anything they want to with any file within the system and you are helpless to stop it?"_

"That about sums it up."

"Detective maybe the answer you are looking for is the one that was overlooked. You know, the obvious reason is the one that we dismiss the most. This just might be the key. Tell your IT department that the answer might be staring them right in their faces and they don't even know it."

"You might be right! I really need to go. Thanks again for this report detective Seavers."

Javi parks on the street next to the 12th and heads up the stairs to his floor. He needs to see Kevin and Tori and tell them what he thought, he had an idea.

Xx

Both of Rick's hands were occupied. His right thumb was repeating the circular motion over his daughter's knuckles while his left was gently caressing the side of her cheek. Her temperature had gone down considerably but she was still burning up. He looked down and that's when he noticed it. Her eye lids started to flicker and she was rolling her head from side to side.

"Alexis, pumpkin, come on I need you to open your beautiful eyes for me."

She was trying, that much he could see so, he kept telling her to come back to him.

"Alexis, baby come on just find the strength to open them I know you can do it!"

It was the word he had been wanting to hear since this whole ordeal started…

"Daddy?"


	15. Chapter 15

"Alexis? Please say that again!" Rick was hoping that she'd say his name again.

"Daddy?"

"Oh my god! That is the sweetest sound I've ever heard!"

"Where am I?" Alexis asks.

"Pumpkin it's a long story. But first I need to get Doctors Young and Allen." Rick squeezes her hand, gives her a quick kiss on her forehead and then rushes out of the room to go find the doctors.

Xx

Kate watches as Ryan returns from the IT department. His shoulders are slumping down and the look on his face is one of disgust. She knows by his tells that he had no luck at 1PP.

"Ryan, what did you find out at 1PP?" Kate asked.

"Absolutely nothing. Even the best of the IT department is in the dark. They have never seen a virus that pops up, takes over the system and then just disappears again without a trace."

"Kevin, check in with Tori and see how far she has progressed." Kate said.

Just as Kevin turns to leave Espo is running across the bullpen straight for Beckett's desk. When he gets there his face is red from running up four flights of stairs.

"Beckett, Ryan I have an idea. But first I need to catch my breath so hold on a sec."

"Espo, maybe you're getting too old to be a detective." Kate kids with him.

"Maybe Beckett, but I'll still run laps around you!"

"And you're cocky too! Good. So, what's so important that you felt the need to run all the way up here?"

"I have some advice from a new friend. He suggested that we go back to the beginning."

"That's what your friend told you? That makes no sense Espo." Kate cautions.

"In principle, it does Beckett. After he told me that I started to think on the drive back here. Everything that we depend on is overseen by the network. Now, the network is down and everything that is associated with it is down as well, right?"

"Well yeah of course it is. You'd have to be blind not to see it!" Kevin replies.

"Don't you see? What we need to do is take out the server side of everything that it has power over. I can think of two systems that we can get back right now!"

"You can? What are these systems Javi?" Kevin is now curious to see what he says.

"We know that we can't do a damn thing about the network, right Kev?"

Ryan just shakes his head.

"But the systems that I'm talking about are mechanical in operation. If we run those independent of the network we should have at least the basics."

"Javi, what are you talking about?" Kate asks.

Kevin starts to see what he's saying and answers for him.

"Kate, if we drop the power and phones from the network we can get those utilities back. The 12th has a secondary power source, right? If we can reroute the power from the main grid into the backup generator we could bypass the networks hold on that system then we might be able to get the power back. We could also isolate the phone system from the network as well, but that would take a little more time. The network itself, I can't do anything with. IT needs to see how far they can get on the virus."

"DO IT!" Kate tells him and then Ryan is moving to the morgue.

"Espo, what did you find out from the report that Secaucus PD gave you?" Kate asked as she sat at her desk.

"These three were suspected in at least three bombings around Europe. One in London, one in Nice France, and the last in Brussels Belgium. All were thought to be part of a terrorist group but they were never proven to be a part of it."

"Let me guess there's more?"

"Yes. That was just the tip of the iceberg. They were suspected of kidnapping, attempted murder of a consulate official, weapons smuggling, and narcotics distribution. Somehow they were never arrested and always made a clean escape before the authorities had pieced it together."

"They had someone looking out for them." Kate realizes.

"It would seem that way." Javi adds.

"Keep on it Espo and let me know what you find out.

"You got it, boss."

Xx

Rick runs into the lab and sees Dr. Young first. Skidding to a stop he stops right behind him and out of breath.

"Rick, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong Lanie! Alexis is awake and she seemed to be aware of her surroundings."

"Mr. Castle, try not to get your hopes up. This condition might cause a series of coherency that could very well be short lived." Dr. Young says.

Rick lost all hope with what he said. But Lanie wanted to go see for herself.

"Rick come on! Let's see if she's still awake."

"Dr. Parish I must warn you that you have the identical symptoms as Ms. Castle. You might be fine one minute and then feel like you can't breathe the next. So please take precautions." Dr. Young states.

"I will Dr. Young!" Then Lanie and Dr. Young are following Rick back to his daughter's room. When they arrive they all see a very wide awake Alexis just staring off into the hospital room. Hearing them arrive, she turns her head back to the group.

"Dad? Who's that?" She asked while pointing to Dr. Young.

"Alexis, save your strength. This is Dr. Young. He is a top researcher in the field of toxic chemicals." Rick explains to her.

Alexis just looks at her dad wondering what he's talking about. Then the Dr. starts to explain her condition to her.

"Ms. Castle, you have been exposed to a combination of toxic chemicals that when combined together produce an even more toxic gas. When you inhaled this gas while you were in the morgue, it had done adverse damage to your respiratory system. As far as we know there is no known cure."

"If there's no cure how is it that I'm talking to you now?"

"Ah, you can thank Dr. Parish for that. She had graciously given us some of her blood and we cleaned it of anything toxic. Then we sent it to work in your blood system. Her sample is attacking the toxic blood in your system. But I must warn you this is only temporary. It will buy us some time to find a regiment of treatments that might work. Soon you will be feeling the same as you were only hours ago." The doctor finishes.

Alexis looks to her dad and then to Lanie saying a whispered thank you. Dr. Young is heading back to his lab and Rick reaches out for his elbow pulling him out into the hallway.

"Dr. Young, I was sure that Dr. Allen wanted to be here for something as big as this. Where is he now?" Rick asks.

"Mr. Castle, Dr. Allen is running an errand for me. He will be back early tomorrow to pick where I left off in the lab. He should return around four am this morning."

Dr. Young won't reveal exactly where his colleague is. If he does Mr. Castle might get his hopes up for a false alarm. He'll keep this under wraps until he speaks with Dr. Allen tomorrow.

"Alright, Dr. Young. I'll be in with Alexis." Rick turns and heads back into Alexis' room. What he hopes to find is a happy smiling daughter. What faces him is nothing of the sort. Alexis is out of the bed and on her knees leaning over the suffocating body Dr. Parish. Lanie's hands are at her neck trying to rip an airway open in her throat. Her eyes are getting bigger with every second that goes by trying to inhale. Alexis looks up to him and tells him,

"DAD get Dr. Young back in here NOW!" Alexis yells.

When she speaks it's barely above a croaking frog but he understands her request and he's running down the hallway catching up to the doctor.

"DR. YOUNG! Stop! We need you back in Alexis' room, Dr. Parish has collapsed and can't take in any air."

Without any hesitation, they both take off running to the room. Dr. Young gets there and sees his worst nightmare coming true in front of him. First things first. He rushes back out to the med cart in the hallway and unlocks it. From it, he pulls out a syringe and a clear bottle. Relocking the cart, he runs back into the room and takes the Prednisone steroid and the syringe from his coat pocket and fills the syringe. Swabbing her arm, he quickly injects the drug and waits. About a minute later Dr. Parish relaxes the grip on her throat and starts to breathe a little easier. She is not safe yet so he waits for her to have a reaction to the drug he has just given her. At about the ten-minute mark she is almost breathing normally, but her time spent back and forth between the lab and Ms. Castle's room is over.

"Dr. Parish, can you hear me?" He asks.

Lanie nods her head.

"Good. Glad that you're still with us."

Lanie can only smile.

"Well, I'm sorry to say that you will be placed right here next to Ms. Castle. My belief is these symptoms will only progress to a shutdown of your respiratory system and then your cardio vascular system next. Lanie sadly nods once again.

Xx

For the first time in two days, the 12th has power provided by a backup generator and they are now able to make calls out from the phone system.

"Espo, since we have the phones back up start by calling INTERPOL back and see what you can find out about those three mercenaries. I'm going to head back to the hospital and see how Castle is doing. I should be back before the shift ends.


	16. Chapter 16

They were making progress. This was a good thing in her mind. Javi had run down all the information that INTERPOL had given them. And it was a daunting task. You never realize how much you depend on the technology that you have at your fingertips until it's not there. Ryan was making progress with the network as well. Well, almost. He and Tori along with the IT department had come up with a plan to try to vacate the virus from the servers. They were still a bit hesitant to try doing it for fear that it would send them further into the stone age. She is drawn from her thoughts when Espo walks up to her desk.

"Yo, Beckett!"

"What is it Espo?"

"Where were you just now? You looked like you were lost just then."

"It's nothing Javi. Just thinking that's all. So, anything new?"

"Yeah, actually. The three dead guys or mercs now that we know that they went rogue and decided that working for themselves was more lucrative, but were beyond brutal. They were suspected to have pulled off the bombings as you already know, but they had also dabbled in kidnappings. These usually ended with their demands not being met and when they weren't the person they took ended up dead."

"Well, that's nothing new. If they were doing it for the money and the result was not in their favor, they used their captive to prove a point."

"Yeah, that I can see Beckett, but it's how they did it that really pisses me off!"

"What? What did they do?" Kate asked.

"It seems that when these people were kidnapped, these three guys had inside information on everything about the person they were taking. Everything from finances to what their hopes and dreams were."

"This is a kidnapper standard M/O. Why are you telling me something I already know Espo?"

"Kate, I know you know that, but this was something deeper, something more disturbing on the kidnapper's part. The people that were kidnapped were given exactly forty-eight hours for someone to pay up. If they did not have their cash within the specified time, these guys just killed them. No second chances to plead for their lives, no negotiations.

"Oh. Well, that's…"

"Kate, that's not the half of it. The way they killed them? Well, let's just say that these guys were sadistic. They would use their captive's weaknesses against them. If a person was petrified of the water, these guys drowned them. If they were afraid of closed in tight spaces, they were suffocated. You get the picture."

"It's a good thing that these guys are already dead. They can't do this to anyone else."

"While that's a comforting thought, I think that there was someone else who told them what to do and how their detainees were supposed to die. Someone with inside information."

"And you think that this guy is around? Here in the states?"

"Yeah, I do. There's more to this, I just can't put my finger on it."

Kate is about to respond but before she can her cell pings with an incoming text from Castle. She pulls out the phone and reads the short message with hope. But her facial expression changes quickly from one of happiness to that of fear in a heartbeat.

"Espo, I need to go to the hospital. Something happened to Lanie."

"Kate? What happened to her?"

"Javi, she collapsed in Alexis' room not being able to breathe. Damn, I should've been there, I should have left before this so I could be there!"

"Kate, just go! Now!" Espo yells.

She's gone before he can say anything else.

Xx

"Alexis, what you did was brave, but a little stupid. You risked yourself to get to me on the floor, not too smart on your part."

"Dr. Parish, I'd do it again! And no, it wasn't stupid! I had to make sure that you will make it through this in one piece."

"Alexis, it's Lanie. I think we're way past formal titles by now, don't you?"

Alexis tries to smile and it isn't quite there, but Lanie knows. Just then her father bounces back into the room. He has a carry tray with coffee cups in it.

"So, how are my two favorite women doing?"

"Dad really?" Alexis demands.

"Yeah Castle, are you sure that we're your two _favorite_ women?"

"Yeah, why would you say that?" Rick looks to Lanie hoping for an explanation.

"Come on dad, I know for a fact that there is someone just a little more special that you care about than the two of us." Alexis adds.

His head darts back to his daughter and gives her a look that says she better stop before she gets in too deep with her comments. But it's already too late.

"Castle, are you sure about that? I'm sure that there is a certain someone who has captures more of your attention than lil ole us!" Lanie presses on with the comments in her southern drawl.

"Lanie, not now! This is not the time or the place. So, zip it!"

God, how can he be so dense? She relents for now, but this is not over. Lanie looks over to Alexis and winks. She winks in return.

Seeing that he is still holding the cups out in front of them he starts.

"Hey, I brought you two something soothing, I hope. Lanie, I picked you up some Earl Grey with a lemon twist, and pumpkin, I got you a Peppermint Herbal Tea. This should calm the both of you down a little." _And maybe they'll keep their comments to themselves!_ Rick thinks to himself.

But his hopes are soon dashed. Lanie starts in again on him.

"So Rick, why the withdrawal from our conversation so suddenly before?" Lanie asks.

"Lanie, and you too Alexis, you need to stop worrying about my personal life. I am happy just the way my life is right now. Who or who is not in it now is none of your business. And now I'm just a partner to Detective Beckett. So, please just keep what you think to yourself for now. I screwed up any chance I had with her after we made it alive out of the East river. She is disappointed with me now after she found out that I slept with Sophia Turner. And as for who I lov… I mean like, that ship has sailed. You should try conserving all the energy you can because you'll both need it later. Are we done here?"

They both nod staying quiet.

Xx

Kate ran from the elevator once she stepped off and down to Alexis' room and hopefully it was the same room Lanie was in. When she hears Lanie and Alexis' voices, she slows to a skidding stop right next to the door, not seen, but still out of sight. She listens to her best friend and her partner's daughter give him some well-deserved teasing. She ventures a look inside when the voices cease and sees Lanie wink at Alexis. Kate makes eye contact with Lanie and she knows that when Rick is done giving them their tea, she will start in on him again. It's simply in her nature to stir the pot.

She hears Lanie start again and she listens as he defends his personal life in a warning tone. Then she remembers when he told her when he slept with Sophia. What she remembers doing after he told her is that she started to distance herself from him because of it. She knew that this happened long before they became partners and if there was one thing she could take back it would be how she treated him afterward. Then she hears his near admission of loving her. At first, she's upset that he thinks her love is not returned. But that soon turns to an ache in her heart she can't stop. She knew he loved her, she just never took the time to see him for more than the womanizer he is. Now it seems that his mind is made up. She can't let him think what he is thinking because he's wrong, so wrong. She has the awareness to move away from the door when she hears him turn and head for the exit of the room. She scurries to an alcove used for nurses to update their files. She makes herself small and waits. She watches as he passes and he looks like he lost his best friend. She waits to peek around the corner of the wall and catches him as he steps on the elevator. Quick to move from her hiding spot she turns to go to Alexis and Lanie's room. Once she enters she looks at the both of them and sees the despair written all over their faces.

"Sweetie, I'm so sorry. I should have stopped before it got that far."

"Me too Detective Beckett. I'm sorry." Alexis kicks in.

"Listen you two, while I now know how he feels, keep it up! Keep on badgering him. I have a plan…."

Lanie and Alexis just look at each other.


	17. Chapter 17

He was lucky! He had just enough time to get to the gate and still make his flight that despite all the traffic he had to go through to get here. Planning to take the earliest flight he can get, he still has time to make it back to the hospital with what they had manufactured to fight what had attacked his patients. With this new information and compound that he got from the doctors here in Austria, hopefully, without a doubt, he'll be able to save his patients. That meant getting hourly updates on the status of the disease that was affecting them. When he arrived here yesterday, the doctors were doubtful at first. To their knowledge, they know of no antidote that existed for the combination of chemicals used that affected his patients.

Upon his arrival, they had shown him documents that the chemical compound he was asking about was no longer being produced by the Soviet bloc. The unit that had come up with this deadly mixture of chemicals had destroyed everything including the antidote. So, their work was cut out for them. They worked tirelessly throughout the night only catching short catnaps in order to produce something that gave them hope. When morning came they were sure they had something that would benefit his patients. This is why he was running towards the gate to make his plane on time. The problem he had when he got to the Airport was the disclosure of what he was carrying in the refrigerated cylinder. When he explained to them that this was a medical emergency, and the compound in the cylinder was just created a short time ago, the authorities at the Airport checked with the lab confirming their work the prior night. He was given priority over other passengers to board the plane immediately. As he sat down and his seat near first class, he releases a breath knowing he made the flight in time. The last and final hurdle was making it through U.S. customs. Dr. Allen had an idea. He placed a call to Dr. Young and tell him of his pending arrival to JFK and to alert U.S. customs to his precious cargo. He thought that a phone call from Dr. Young to the customs department might speed things up a little bit. So while he still has the time on the ground, he pulls out his cell phone and calls Dr. Young.

"Dr. Young speaking."

"Dr. Young this is Dr. Allen calling from the Airport in Austria. I need you to call the U.S. customs office at JFK and tell them I'm on the flight from Austria that lands at JFK at 5:30 am. The flight number 1436. Tell them I'll be carrying a container that has a new chemical compound to cure a deadly disease."

"Dr. Allen please tell me that you have the necessary paperwork to transport this?" Dr. Young asks.

"Dr. Young, according to the agreement we have between Austria and United States we are allowed to ship a very small amount of new compounds without paperwork. This is not a chemical compound designed to be used as a weapon of any kind. So, I should have no problem, that is as long as you call them and tell them I'm on my way."

"All right Dr. Allen. I'm placing the call after I hang up with you. Just get back here as quick as you can. Because Miss Castle's condition has changed drastically since the last time you checked in with us."

"I'll be there as soon as I can Dr. Young, just be ready when I do get there." Dr. Allen hangs up the phone and fastens his seat belt in place. His one-way nonstop flight back to JFK would take him the next 9 hours to complete. Finding a decent position to sleep in he asked to have a pillow delivered to him when the flight attendant walked down the aisle. She returned with one of the softest, fluffiest pillows he had ever felt. Placing it under his head and leaning against the window he slowly closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Xx

Kate has to think of a way to get Rick alone so they can talk. Hearing what he said in his daughter's room she can only think about how wrong he really was. And he's only half right about his fling with Clara Strike. Sure, at the time she might have been one of his conquests, but maybe he really did care about her when they were with each other. And maybe she just did care about him a little bit, but she rethinks that decision because, in the end, Clarence Strike was a traitor plain and simple. And he's right about one thing she really can't hold what they did together against him because they hadn't met yet. She would really hate to be put in a position where she would have to reveal all of her ex-lovers. Not that there were many, but she thinks that this will be humiliating, to say the least.

But she could kill her best friend. The way those two were plotting against her, well actually Rick, they needed to be taught a lesson for sticking their noses in places it doesn't belong. She'll let that slide for now because if it wasn't for their meddling, maybe she would have never seen, or rather heard how Rick felt, wrong as he might be. So yeah, she really needs to talk to this man.

She really needs to get back to the 12th precinct and see what Kevin had found out, and hopefully, Javi had made some headway on identifying the source that provided the information for the three mercenaries'. She is deep in thought when she pushes the elevator button to head down to her car. When she exits the elevator, she is still thinking about who could possibly want to destroy the NYPD's main source of information. Whoever it was, they had done a lot of research into two things. The first being the server that they attacked and the second was creating the virus that crippled their network. Then she had an idea. Maybe they're going about this the wrong way. She really needs to get back and let Ryan know about the possibility of finding a person or some less than favorable criminal element who can hack the servers to find a way around the virus.

Getting to her car, she stops and looks up to hospital floor she had just left. She does have a plan. Just putting it all together with the help of Lanie and Alexis will be the issue. First, they need and to beat this condition that is slowly killing them. She's unsure how Dr. Young and Dr. Allen will be able to accomplish this with no known antidote. She knows that are trying their hardest to save their lives. Her only hope that they can do it quicker.

Xx

Javi could never understand the lure of what exactly a person could gain by becoming a mercenary. Sure, there was money in it to be made, but the mission as he knew it when he was in the service was one of honor. To defend his brothers there and their way of life back home. Mercenaries' on the other hand, took anything that they could make money with. And it always ended up becoming very dark. It took a lot of digging, but he did find that the three mercenaries had an account in the Cayman Islands. On the day of their death, he had found out with the help of the bank in the Caymans and without a warrant no less that money had been deposited into their account and withdrawn by the same person who deposited it in less than 6 hours later. This was big. From that, he was able to track the account that made and withdrew of the deposits. He had guessed that this was the partial payment because it was only fifty thousand dollars. This is where he met a dead end. It turned out that a company had made and withdrew the cash. And this is where he is right now going over all the records for the company in question. He hears the elevator ding and watches as Kate rushes off. He can see that she's frantically looking for someone. Not finding whoever she looking for she walks up to his desk.

"Javi, where is Kevin right now?"

"Last time I saw him he was with Tori in the server room downstairs."

Before he can say anything else she's already turned away heading back towards the elevator.

Xx

"Tori, if we can isolate the virus once again and try to get around its security, I think we have a good chance of purging this from the server."

"Kevin, what if we're wrong? What if we delete this or try to anyway and it just sets back all the work that we've accomplished so far? I mean we've gotten everything but the server back up and running. I don't want a plunge us into another stone age again!"

"Tori, can you think of a better idea?"

Kevin is about to let her have the honor of pushing the enter button this time. He remembers all too well what happened last time he pushed the enter button.

"Tori I think we'll let you have the honors this time. So whenever you're ready just hit the enter button."

Kate comes rushing into the server room just as Tori is about to push the enter button, her finger hovering dangerously close to it.

"Don't you dare push that god damn button!" Kate yells out.

 **The weekly scheduled update for 10/1/17 will be postponed. Updates will restart again on 10/8/17. I will be heading down to Pensacola Florida to see my son graduate from flight combat training school for the MH-60R Seaking. This will be the same for my other open stories. Sorry for the inconvenience!**

P2P


	18. Chapter 18

"Detective Beckett?" Tori said in a shaky voice suspending her hand right above the keyboard.

"Tori, I want you to carefully move your hand away from the keyboard. Then you and Ryan walk over to me slowly."

Ryan could only stare at Tori's hand hoping that she would be able to resist pressing the enter key. They had invested a lot of time in this not to stop now. But the look Kate was giving them meant business so he moved away from the server and laptop and Tori followed slowly.

"Beckett, what's wrong? We were almost at the point where we could disable the virus and hopefully get the server's back up."

"Ryan, I think I have a better alternative. But I need your help."

"Sure, anything I can do to help. You know that."

"I have an idea but I'm not sure if it's going to work or not. As far as I know, he is still serving 3 to 5 for hacking into a Federal database. I'm not too sure if he'll be happy to see us or even work with us or not, but what I want him to do, believe it or not, is to hack into our system to see what he can find out more about this virus."

"Beckett, I'm not too sure that this is such a good idea. We'll have to be on top of this guy 24/7 from the time he's out of prison until he is brought back. That is if you can get him released. I'm not too sure any judge would give you the authority to take a felon out of prison to look into the NYPD's computer servers."

"Ryan let me worry about the felon. If I can get him sprung, I'm sure with his background he can be the one to help us out of this mess. Who knows, if he does maybe I can put a good word in and get him released earlier."

"Okay, Kate it's your funeral. Good luck!"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence Kevin."

"Hey, I just call em as I see em." He teases.

Kate makes sure that Tori and Kevin leave the server room and lock the door behind them. They still have the phones and power back in the precinct and she doesn't want to lose that. When they arrived back up on the homicide floor, she tells Kevin to pull up the records on a Pierre Dandaneau. She tells him that he is currently at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in the city. And while he's doing that she's going to have Tori rerun the video footage from the three terrorists who detonated the bomb in the morgue. What she really wants to see is there escape. Something's just not right about their escape.

Xx

Dr. Allen runs through the common part of the terminal at JFK once he's cleared U.S. customs. Dr. Young had been able to get the small sample to be allowed to enter the country without a full inspection. He's glad about that because the refrigerant in the canister is almost at thirty degrees. If they had opened it for inspection, the temperature would have risen up, making the antidote useless. As he gets to the ground transportation area he sees a short stocky man holding a Dial 7 car service plaque with his name written in black marker. His arm automatically raises and the man acknowledges his wave. Before he knows it, he gives him a desperate look knowing time is short and then they are both running in a full out sprint to the car he has parked at the curb. Within seconds they're both in and he is speeding away towards the airport exit. The ride is harrowing, to say the least. He's sure that the car he's in is some kind of stunt car. The last thing that he remembers before he hits his head on the passenger side rear window is that the car had somehow become sideways while barely making it through a parked car and a car waiting for a traffic light to change at the intersection of Broadway and 159th street. When the car came back in contact with the pavement it was nothing but speed from that point on. The limo comes to a screeching halt right in front of Columbia's ER entrance. It's the closest to where he needs to be and without warning the driver extends his hand through the front seat into the back waiting for a handshake. He does and the driver says,

"Doc, get in there and save Dr. Parish and Miss Castle!"

"I will." Dr. Allen says as he is reaching for the door handle. Then he's off running through the ER bay doors and moving towards the lab all the time trying to figure out how the driver knows about his patients.

When he gets there, he sees that Dr. Young has moved the patients to be closer to the lab. He is out of breath when he just about runs into Dr. Young and Mr. Castle, but he is still able to tell them that he has the compound that they had made in Austria with the other researchers. All they need to do is synthesize the compound and get it ready to be administered to the patients. But that will take about three to four hours. Dr. Young takes the canister and gets to work in a hurry.

Xx

Now that Kate has a moment to breathe, she needs to think about how to handle the situation with Lanie and Alexis' meddling into her and Rick's personal life. She does care about him, and if she really thought about this logically (as she always does) she was in love with him, but with everything he is facing with his daughter's health and she's sure just by her relationship with Lanie he's concerned about her now to as well there is just so much that he has to worry about now for her to tell him how she feels about him. She wants to, but there is a time and a place for everything in life and this, right now, is neither the time nor the place.

But then she thinks back to Lanie's nagging voice of reason…

 _"Kate, why do you think he's been hanging around all this time? Do you really think that he does not have enough "research" done to leave you by now if he wanted to? The man lives and breathes on everything you do and say! Kate, he loves you, so what are you going to do about it?"_

As Lanie's condescending devil voice dissipates from her mind she needs to think about what she really wants with Rick. What she wants is everything. Nothing is hidden in sub-text, innuendoes or secrets. A way to talk to him without being on the defensive every time they get together. It's not like she's afraid to be with him, but he does bring out in her something that she has never felt before by being with any other man. While they've never really talked about it, she knows that they really need to sit down and just talk. Really talk. After he gets through this crisis though. She is just about to head out to Columbia to see how her best friend and her partner's daughter are doing when Kevin walks up to her desk pulling her from her thoughts.

"Kate, I have the supervisor from Metropolitan Correctional on the line, and he said he can put Pierre in an isolated holding cell until you get a hold a Federal judge and have a release issued for him. The hold will only be for twelve hours after that he goes back into gen pop."

"Thanks, Kev. I will try to get a very understanding judge to issue a temporary release."

"Kate, a word of advice… don't mention to him that you are going to let this guy hack into our database. I'm just sayin." He says as he shrugs his shoulders.

"Yeah, don't worry I won't." Kate watches him turn and walk back this desk and as he is doing that, she is busy finding a lenient judge to give her what she needs.

She's had no luck what so ever. She has called seven judges and each and every one of them has denied her request. She has one last hope. Chief Judge Colleen McMahon of the United States District Court for the District of New York in White Plains. Since she has exhausted all her choices in the city and this is her last hope. She picks up her cell phone and dials the judge's office. The call is answered on the first ring.

"Judge McMahon's office how can I help you?"

"Hello, this is Detective Kate Beckett from the 12th precinct in New York City. Is judge McMahon available?"

"Just one moment detective."

"Judge McMahon, how can I help you, Detective?"

"Your honor I am requesting a temporary release for a prisoner in the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in Manhattan. We have found that he has expertise that we could use in a case and with that expertise the case will be solved rather quickly."

"Detective, does this case have a life and death outcome involving one of our sworn officers or investigators?" The judge asks.

"No your honor. But with his assistance and cooperation, we could stop a major breach of information to reach the light of day. I really need to stress the point that this is very, very important. I wouldn't be asking if I didn't think he could be useful."

"Detective I'm just not going to turn over a federal prisoner to assist you in a case whether or not it's important. That is unless you can prove to me otherwise that using this person would be a last resort."

"Your honor, you are my last resort and he can be helpful I'm positive of it."

"Detective, you do realize that you and you alone would be in charge of this prisoner do you not? So, if he is lost or escapes your custody you might as well kiss your career goodbye."

"Your honor, I am well aware of the implications I face if this prisoner escapes my custody."

"Very well then Detective, send me the request for temporary custody to be released only to you."

"I will your honor."

Kate hangs up the phone and breathes a sigh of relief. She quickly pulls the Federal Form for the temporary transfer order on her computer. In less than five minutes she has the form filled out and faxed over to judge McMahon's office. Now all she can do is wait.


	19. Chapter 19

Jeremiah was painstaking thorough when he had his mind set to something. So much that he needed to make a rare appearance at Columbia to make sure that the two people who'd been able to identify the merc's he hired never regained consciousness. He gathered as much information from the OCME server as he could. Not only was he able to find out their progress on the murder case of the idiots he hired, but he was also able to look into the progress of the ME and her assistant in real time. Ahh, the joys of having the upper hand.

He had noticed everything that detectives Ryan and Ellis did to attempt to rectify the situation they were faced with now. He had anticipated their incapable attempts to disable the virus at every step and as he watches their progress on his laptop, which has been idle for the last two hours he sits back in his chair and wonders why. Prior to the past two hours, they had attempted to isolate the virus and purge it from the server. When he was sure that they would since that was the direction that they were moving in he waited like a child at Christmas for them to reactivate the program by deleting the security measures that hid the virus. Only that never happened.

He decides that a break is needed before he looks into the NYPD server and finds out all about the detective that seems to be the one in charge. While he is preparing his cup of coffee, he thinks about what he can do to deal with her. He could always alter her service record that would show her in a negative light, but he rethinks this. He needs to get back on point and take care of the situation he was paid to do and deal with her later. The group that hired him was a very demanding firm who were ruthless in the defense of their clients. They were defending many clients who at this moment were spread throughout the NYPD's correctional facilities all over the state. Some were here in the city, but there were others that the Corrections Department had mover upstate due to the threats that they received from the public. So, guarding their safety became a top priority.

He walks back to the table with a hot cup of coffee cradled in his hand. He always liked a ceramic cup compared to the cheap cardboard cups that most people were given nowadays. Once he reaches his desk where the laptops are open and has unlimited access to the NYPD's information, he places the coffee cup next to the laptop on the desk and then he starts his search. He types in the names of the four men and two women he needs to locate. While the server is a fast server, it still takes him about four minutes to locate all the names. The two women are being held in a medium security prison in Albion, New York. The men, on the other hand, will be harder to get to. Two are in the downstate prison located in Fishkill New York, one is in a maximum security prison at the Eastern Correctional Facility in Ulster County, and the last one is in Rikers. He sits back in his chair and thinks about a way to get the client in the maximum security prison out first. It's not impossible, but it does present a challenge. Getting the two women out will be easy. He'll just order their release in the form of a transfer to the southern district court. Of course, they will be intercepted and sent out of state. Rikers is easy to take anybody from. But the two in the downstate prison will be harder to find. When he entered their names into the search parameters he found out that they were being held as Transit prisoners. The New York state prison system temporarily ships prisoners to this facility first. And when they're finally assigned a permanent prison they're shipped to that prison. He will need more hired guns to be able to get this done.

Xx

Rick watches with intense fear as Dr. Young and Dr. Allen walk into Lanie and Alexis' room. They are carrying what looks like the cooler that the organ transport units use to transport live human organs with. Looking at each other before they turn to him, the elder doctor just nods. Dr. Allen moves into the lab and places the cooler on the lab table by the microscope. Once he has the necessary equipment he flips open the lid on the cooler. From it, he takes out two small vials filled with a light pink heavy looking liquid. He'd swear it looks just like cough syrup. He removes the plastic guard from the needle that's attached to a large syringe. Carefully he inserts the needle into the tube and pulls back the plunger, the plunger fills the syringe to almost full and he tosses the tube into the hazardous materials waste receptacle. Placing the syringe into a holder on the table he repeats the process with the second syringe. Checking to make sure his work is complete, he places both syringes on an aluminum tray and covers them with a cloth. He looks up to Dr. Young and Rick can see the sweat bead on the top of his forehead. He picks up the tray and makes his way into their room from the lab. He gives Doctor Young one last look for he removes the cloth and hands him the first syringe. The administering of the serum has to be at the same time the reason being is that they need to see the results of how the antidote affects both patients. Standing at the IV-line Dr. Allen looks over to Dr. Young and nods. Each pushes the plunger on the syringe into the IV access port and the pink liquid starts flowing down the line. The easy part is over now it's just a matter of waiting. Dr. Young suspects that Miss Castle will be the one to recover first. Dr. Parrish, on the other hand, had slowly started to take a downward spiral for the worse before Dr. Allen arrived with the serum. He anticipates her recovery to take just a little longer than his younger patient. They both pull up chairs and sit down while watching every reaction from their patients with careful eyes.

Xx

Deep in his soul, Rick is hoping for the best. He knows he needs both of them to get through this and recover as quickly as they can. And he's ashamed to the fact that he wants his daughter to come out of this better than his friend Lanie. He thinks it's how overprotective he is over the people he loves and he wonders what he would do if it was Kate lying there in the bed where his daughter was suffering the same way. He's afraid to admit his feelings towards her because her main defense mechanism was to just push him to where he wouldn't see her hurting emotionally. He showed her in the past that he is more committed to what they could have and he wonders if she's ever seen them the way he sees them. He hopes that she does and once this crisis is over he's going to prove his point. He can only hope that this happens quickly.

"Mr. Castle, I think that you could use some food and rest. You've been here in this hospital from the start and I think you could use a break. I promise you that you will be called if there are any changes with your daughter or Dr. Parish." Dr. Young tells him.

"Doctor Young, while I appreciate the concern, I am not going to leave this room until my daughter and Dr. Parish have come back from this ordeal. I do not think it wise to just leave now when the antidote was just administered minutes ago."

"Rick, you need rest. You have been awake for the last thirty-one hours straight. What about a compromise?"

Rick's eyebrows knit together and his suggestion and listens to the man.

"Well, that got your attention now didn't it?"

"Yes. what did you have in mind doctor?" Rick asks intrigued.

"There is an on-call room right next to this room. If you will, there are a set of scrubs on the cot that is there, hopefully in your size. I had to guess at that, sorry if they don't fit right. Anyway shower, change into the scrubs and get a couple of hours of sleep. I promise you that I will wake you if there is any change in their status. You have my word." Dr. Young finishes.

"I'll agree but with one condition. The second my daughter or Lanie show any type of response I want to be informed. This is not negotiable."

"Rick, you have my word. I promise."

"I guess then a couple of hours of sleep could be good."

"We'll wake you the second a change happens. Try to rest Rick."

Rick takes one last look at his daughter and Lanie and turns to leave. He finds that the doctor is a very good judge of size when he puts on the scrubs after he showers. The cot while being too short for his large frame looks uncomfortable, that is until he lays down and draws the blanket over his body. Within seconds of his head hitting the pillow and the warmth wrapping around him, he is quickly asleep. His sleep is dreamless and peaceful.


	20. Chapter 20

This has to be a dream. There's no way there's any truth to what he just heard. But as his eyes open the man is standing right there next to him. He is dreaming, he had to be. But when the man spoke again, he restated the phrase only with more urgency in his voice.

"Rick, I'm not pulling your leg here! Get your ass out of that cot. You've been asleep for the last ten hours."

Bleary-eyed, he looks up at the man making demands of him. What he sees is Dr. Young. And he indistinctly remembers asking him to wake him up if something drastic had happened to his daughter or Lanie. He just can't wrap his head around what's going on right in front of him. Maybe he's had too much sleep, that's gotta be it. He swings his legs to the side of the bed and attempts to stand. When he does his ass falls right back down onto the cot. It's like he hasn't used any of the muscles in his body in like forever. He looks up to the doctor one more time to make sure he's really there and this isn't some hallucination.

"Rick, come on! What the hell are you doing?"

Finally seeing through the haze, he stands up stronger than before. The second he does Dr. Young turns and leaves the room that he's been in for the last 10 hours. He makes a simple U-turn out of the on-call room and into his daughter's room and in seconds he sees his daughter's bright blue eyes staring right back at him. He can't believe what he's seeing. He thought it would never happen but now he knows it to be true. The antidote that they made, (wherever they made it because he's not sure where that was) has done its job. He's hesitant at first, but he stands at the side of her bed and takes her hand. And it's one of the best feelings in the world! Her hand is warm against his again not like it was before when he went in to get some sleep. Before it was like she was dead. Her hand, her body, everything about her was cold, ice cold. Knowing that she has come out of this condition somewhat and looks better, he looks over towards Lanie.

For the first time, he notices Dr. Allen standing alongside her. She looks worse than she did when he left 10 hours ago. Since then she's been put on a ventilator to help her breathe. He can't believe it, she's supposed to be getting better. They got the injection at the same time so it just seems to reason that she should be getting better at the same time as his daughter is. They both received the antidote. It's then when he sees his daughter looking over to the bed where Lanie lays. Her eyes go wide and he can tell the instant that she assumes blame for what has happened to her, best friend and mentor.

Xx

Pierre Dandaneau sits in the interrogation room handcuffed to the table. Esposito has been with him since he arrived, or better yet since he had to retrieve him from the common area of the prison during his time in the yard. Of course, he didn't come willingly and a chase ensued bringing Javi through places in the prison where he never wants to go to again. He sits back in his chair and takes it in his condition. He is the true definition of a total geek. Horn Rim glasses, long greasy hair and it looks like he hasn't had a shower in at least a week. He can't wait until someone gets him out of here. He doesn't have long to wait. His boss comes in and takes charge like she does glad that she's here now. _Good, he thinks she can have him!_

"Espo, go out and see Ryan. He was able to piece together names that could possibly be linked to the attack on the 12th on a scale of this size. Just run his list of names and let me know what you find. This could be a good lead."

"On it, boss."

Expo turns and leaves hoping that they can find out who is doing this and why they would do it.

Once the interrogation room door closes, Kate starts.

"Mr. Dandaneau I'm told that you're very handy in hacking into places you shouldn't be in. Is this a fair assumption of your abilities?" Kate asks.

"You could say something like that, although I'm not going to admit it to you, you're a cop lady and I'm a criminal, it would only get worse from here on out so I'm not saying a damn thing to you.

"What if I told you I could lessen or maybe even arrange that your current sentence is reduced to time served?"

"Wait…. Who do I have to kill? Because what you're asking me to do involves more than just hacking into a system. No one would do that for me."

"And that's where your wrong mister Dandaneau. You'd be surprised at what someone would do to get what they want. So, are you in? Or do you want to spend the next ten years of your life in prison? The choice is yours, but this offer expires in 30 seconds." Kate states as she looks at her watch.

Xx

"Rick, I know it looks bad now but Dr. Parish started to show signs of extreme respiratory distress. We needed to intubate her when her breathing became more labored, and her blood tests came back with an anomaly that we can't identify. So, we plan on giving her an hour or two before we look into finding out why the antidote is not working. But within that time frame it could also reverse itself and her system might accept the antidote and she'll be okay."

"Dr. Young, what about Alexis is she going to be okay?" Rick asks.

"Rick, it will be touch and go for a little bit, the next 12 hours are critical for her health. We are putting her through the same tests that we're putting doctor Parish through, but we're just seeing better results from the first round of her tests. To be honest, I'd have to say that it's largely due to her age, she is younger and can recover sooner than Dr. Parish can. If nothing changes in the next 12 hours then I don't see why we can't discharge her by tonight.

"Alexis, how do you feel about leaving this place? You've been here for over three days going on four are you ready to get out of here?

"Dad, I'm not going anywhere until Lanie is out of trouble and I know that she's safe. I'm sorry but I can't leave."

He knew she would never leave. She's just that type of person that when she's committed to something she stays until it's done.

"I understand pumpkin. I really hate to do this and I know that you're feeling at least fifty percent better, but I'm going to see about heading over to the 12th Precinct to help Kate and the boys. They're still dealing with the server issue and they need to have it back up. It's like working in the stone age. Will you be okay if I go?"

"Dad, I'll be fine. How long do you plan on being gone? I could use a new phone because mine is sitting in the water somewhere in the morgue."

"I'll get you a new phone honey I promise. As for how long I'll be gone, I'll probably be at the precinct for a couple hours at least. Right now, it's just before ten a.m. I plan on staying there until two at least, and I promise to come back no matter what, by 2:30. Oh, and I will bring you some clothes from home because I know how much you love those all exposing hospital gowns!"

"Deal dad." She smiles at him.

Xx

"You drive a hard bargain Detective. So, what is it that I have to do? And if I can get through whatever you need me to get through, we'll talk about my reduction in my sentence later. I know you had to pull strings to get me out of prison and I promise if you can get me out early I will be on my best behavior. I'm not all that bad, detective."

"Pierre, what we have is a virus that is attacking two separate servers. The NYPD's main server which supplies everything from employee's information to cases and evidence files. And the OCME's server has also been compromised. As to what extent we don't know. We do know that someone has been in the system, and they have a Trojan Horse attached to this virus that simply shut the system down and moves within the system making it harder for anyone to detect where it is the next time we look for it. Right now, we have an isolated with two other viruses that have not been touched yet. That's where you come in. What we need you to do is isolate this virus the main virus, not the sub viruses that are attached to it and somehow circumvent the virus to think that it's still attached to the server. Is there a way to do that?"

"Detective, this sounds like the worst-case scenario if not an impossible thing to deal with. But that's not to say that it can't be dealt with. It might take some time but I'm pretty sure I can get into the virus, hack the sub viruses and take care of those. The main virus is probably a work of art. Something that will have to be dissected in order to understand before I disable it. If I can disable it. Now it's my understanding that you wanted to still be in contact with the server as I'm about to mirror it, correct?"

"Mirror, it?"

"Yes, detective, I'm going to mirror it. What I'll do is I'll make a ghost virus and it will take the form of the virus that's on the server. It will act like the initial virus in every way except it won't do anything until we tell it to."

"When can you start?" Kate asks hopefully.

"Show me where the server is and we'll get started right away."

Kate uncuffs her prisoner from the interrogation table. They both head off down to the server room, and on the way, Ryan sees them and tags along at a safe distance behind them.


	21. Chapter 21

They were at each other's throats until Kate had decided to put an end to it once and for all.

"Ryan what I need you to do now is sit down in that chair and don't say another word."

Kate turns and faces Pierre with a pissed off dirty look on her face.

"And you, this is what you call your best behavior? Arguing with a detective who knows this system inside and out. Granted he might not know what you do, but he does know this system and he is only providing you with some help. This is not earning you any brownie points to be staying out of jail."

"Detective, I don't need him looking over my shoulder every three seconds. I do my best work alone, and I have moved further into these viruses than he ever has. The fact that he does not know what these viruses are capable of scares me. He's treating this as if it's a game, and it's not. This is very, very serious. You are the one who got me out of jail, set me up with the proper equipment to deal with this, and now you're questioning my abilities? I know this is what I was arrested for, but I can beat this! Because if that's the case detective I can stop right now and you can send me right back to prison where I know I'm appreciated."

Xx

Rick walked off the elevator and headed towards Kate's desk. He did see Esposito but no sign of her or Ryan. So, he figures that they must be together somewhere. He's just about to ask Espo where they are when his desk phone rings.

The desk sergeant takes in the sight directly in front of him and can't believe what he sees. A man in his early forties who looks like death warmed over. He looks like a walking ad for a struggling fly by night funeral home.

"Sir, it's imperative that I speak with detective Esposito! It's a matter of life and death."

Sgt. Meyers had heard worse than this, but somehow he managed to believe the man.

"Hang on a second, I'll call up and see if he's here."

The man stood and waited patiently.

"Hey Espo, I have a visitor here to see you."

"Sarge, I'm kinda up to my eyeballs with this case can't they wait?"

"Hold on…"

The sergeant explains to the man that Espo is otherwise tied up and can he come back later.

"Sir, give him this one word." "Goliath." "He'll understand."

"Sarge, I heard him. Send him up."

It's been years since anyone he knew used this word. And he can count the people who know it on one hand since the initial fifteen who did know it is now down to four. He has a good guess who is going to show up in the next two minutes and what he will say will not be something he wants to hear.

Rick watches him after the phone call ends. His face turns a ghastly white/gray, worse than he thinks if he had witnessed Ryan buying the farm in a gunfight. Whatever it is he's heard, he's spooked.

Xx

Kate has finally got the infants to get along and they are making progress with the main virus. They have found out who created it and when it was made. Now they are attempting to figure out the IP address that it's transmitting all the information that it has free reign over. This might take a while because Pierre has found multiple IP addresses and it will take him time to sort out and find the real one.

While she has the time to take a break she tells the infants not to get on each other's nerves for ten minutes while she heads upstairs. Maybe she can call the hospital to see how her best friend is doing because there is no way she'll get to leave now.

"Ryan, make sure Pierre never leaves here or moves out of your sight. Keep him in your field of vision for every second until I get back."

"Got it, boss." He replies and they keep at it.

Kate takes the elevator back up to her floor. When the doors open she sees Espo and Rick almost locked together in mortal combat attempting to beat each other senseless.

 _Five minutes earlier…._

"Bobby, why are you here?"

"Javier, we've known each other for a lifetime, fought together and almost died together. You need to back off this case. The one that you are investigating with the three German mercs."

Espo cocks his head and looks him in the eye. "Bobby, I can't do that and you know why."

"Javi, you're one of my last friends and you need to drop this. If you don't you won't live to see the end of the week. This will cost you your life!"

"Bullshit, I'm not living like you do. You are so sure that what you think could happen…will, to any of us that are left!"

"Espo, what's he talking about?" Rick asks concerned for his friend.

"Castle keep out of this, it doesn't concern you or your overactive writer's imagination!"

But Rick can't or won't lay off and pushes him for more information while Bobby looks on in horror as the scene unfolds in front of him between the two men.

"Espo, tell me what's going on!"

"Castle, last warning! Back. Off."

Now he's at his limit. He can at least get the first punch in catching him off guard before Espo realizes what he's going to do and then maybe he'll see that he's not such a lightweight and listen to reason.

Just as he takes his shot Espo reads his mind and locks arms with him and stops his punch from advancing. Then while they are about an inch away from each other's noses the elevator sounds its arrival and Kate strolls off….

She is at a full run towards the both of them. By the time she gets there she can see that neither of them will back down. What the hell is going on with them? This has to be some kind of sick joke.

"Espo, stand down…NOW!"

"Castle, you as well!"

She places her own body between the two and shoves Espo back dislodging their bodies apart. Castle relents a little but is still red-faced. Espo just sits back down at his desk still pissed off.

"Javi, what gives?"

"Ask your shadow, Beckett!"

Knowing that she would not get a straight answer from either of them she goes at the weaker link.

"Castle, move now. Breakroom!"

She has too much on her plate to put out another damn fire. What the hell is going on here? First Ryan and Pierre, now Javi and Rick. She's surrounded by infants!

"Rick, what the hell happened out in the bullpen? Why were you two just about to kill each other?"

"Beckett, all I did was come back from the hospital and I started looking for you. When I started to ask Esposito where you were, he got a call. When he hung up he turned white as a ghost. I've never seen him like this before. So, I asked him what was wrong. Before he answered, a grungy guy showed up at his desk and they started arguing."

"What about? Does he know this guy?"

"They were talking about something in their past. That's about as far as I got before he shut me down."

"What happened next?"

"The grungy guy told him that if he moved on with this investigation, that he'd be dead by the week's end."

Kate just fell into the chair opposite the coffee machine. She needed to talk to him and now. She thought about how she'd get him to talk because she knew he would shut down on her if she came at him head-on.

"Rick we need to talk later. Just me and you, a serious conversation, but now I need to talk to Espo. So, can you just stay in here until I get this all sorted out?"

"Okay, Kate." Rick agrees and starts walking over to the coffee machine to make a cup for himself and Kate. By the time he is done and he turns around with her cup, the room is empty and she is nowhere in sight.

Xx

Seeing that the grungy guy is walking towards the elevator to head down, she retreats to the stairs and moves quickly down to the lobby to meet with him before he reaches the same location. She is waiting at the sergeant's desk before the elevator arrives. She watches as he passes her and she can see he is either upset or pissed off. She hopes it's not the latter. As he passes she turns and follows him out the front door.

"Would you be up for a cup of coffee?" She asked as she tapped his shoulder to get his attention.

"I'll never turn down a good cup of coffee, Detective Beckett."

She's an alert instantly. She does not know who this man is, but he seems to know about her.

"Good, there's a coffee shop at the end of this block. Lead "Lead the way, Detective."


	22. Chapter 22

The walk to the coffee shop was a short one. Kate had wanted to know why this man thought that Espo would be dead if he moved further with this investigation. It's the one question that she needed an answer to. They order coffee's each, and take a seat at a booth.

"So Bobby, is it?" Kate asked as she took a sip of coffee.

"Yes detective, Bobby Dodd. Me and Esposito go way back."

"You must. But there is one question that's burning in my mind."

"You want to know why he will die if he keeps going forward with this case, right?"

"Something like that."

"Detective, I'll be blunt here. Javi never stops until he gets the answers. He's a lot like you, only he pushes himself harder and in a way that's just like you when you can't figure it out."

"Mr. Dodd, you don't know me, so please do not use me as an example."

"On the contrary detective, I know a lot about you. I know that you have not found the justice you seek for your mother's murder, I also know that right now there is someone with more information than you currently have, someone who can give you closure. So, yes I do know you."

Kate could only stare at this man. How he knew this she had no clue.

"Mr. Dodd, tell me why you think that detective Esposito will be dead before the end of the week if he keeps working this case."

"Simply put detective, he will find a lead that will bring him to the man currently wreaking havoc with your servers. There will be a confrontation between these two men and the detective will not fare well. His search for these clues will be his own demise."

"Mr. Dodd, it seems to me that you could circumvent this whole event by helping us. Believe it or not, I am the lead detective on this case, so if detective Esposito will be dying, then I will be too. I am just as much vested in finding closure for this case as he is."

"I'm sorry to hear that detective."

Before she could react to his comment he slipped a taser from the waistband of his pants. Taking aim had shot her from under the table with the taser. Her body spasmed until she was rendered unconscious. He got up from the booth ripped the barbs from her abdomen and picked her up threw her over his shoulder and walked out through the kitchen exit of the café with her.

Xx

Rick just could not sit in the break room anymore. He heard her correctly when she told him to wait here so they could talk. But it was approaching an hour and he knew that something was wrong. He left the break room and headed back to Espo's desk.

"Espo, where…."

"Castle, why are you here? Beckett is out and yet you are still here bothering me. Can't you see that I have a case to work?"

"Excuse me Detective Esposito, but I thought that since Detective Beckett is still not back yet from a coffee shop that is less than thirty seconds from this building, it might have you a little concerned!" Rick tells him, becoming little pissed.

"Castle, she's an NYPD detective. She can handle herself just fine."

"Then where is she?"

"Castle leave! Just go. I don't care where you go just get out of my sight."

"Go screw yourself, Esposito!"

At his shrug, Rick walked quickly to the elevator and called the car to the floor. If Esposito didn't care about her missing then he sure would. He entered the elevator and leaves the precinct. He walked to the café and walked in hoping the people who worked there had seen them there together.

"So, she was here with him?" Rick asked the barista.

"She was, but then it got really busy and I lost track of when they left."

"Do you have a security camera?"

"Yeah, we do. Let me get my boss and he can take you to the recording room."

The owner comes over and asks Rick why he needs to see the footage. He tells him that there might be a crime that had taken place in his shop earlier. The owner wastes no time to show him the footage.

What he sees is the two of them talking and then Kate starts to visibly shake in her seat. He can see when her eyes flutter closed and her head hits the table. The next thing he sees is the grungy man picking her up like a sack of potatoes and throwing her over his shoulder. In a second he's out of the frame heading back towards the kitchen exit. The whole exchange takes less than three minutes. He looks at his watch and sees that this happened just after she got here fifty minutes ago according to the time stamp on the security footage.

"Can I have that tape?"

The owner ejects the CD and gives it to Rick.

"I'll make sure this gets back to you."

Then he runs for the 12th….

Xx

Dr. Young takes the vitals of a very alert Dr. Parish. He likes what he sees. Her color is returning to her face, she is breathing sixty-five percent easier, and her fever has been reduced by six degrees, showing a 100.3. He's happy because she is aware of her surroundings, and she has not stopped talking since she regained consciousness.

"Sweetie, where are Kate and your father?"

"Dr. Parish, the last time I saw my dad was about twelve hours ago. As for Detective Beckett, I haven't seen her since she was hanging out by the door to our room yesterday."

"We need to seriously plan something to get them to stop this nonsense. You do know that they belong with one another, right?"

"I do, but trying to make them see that, well it won't be easy."

"We'll need a plan…."

Xx

"I need to be paid! You won't know where I stashed her until I get the payment we agreed on. So, what will it be?"

"I'll pay you half and the rest when you bring her to me. That's our new deal."

"That is not what we agreed on and you know it. You agreed to pay me the 50k up front and then I'd bring you to where she is. After that, she's all yours. I don't care what you do with her."

Jeremiah knew he was right. He was going to hold her until he found out what they knew about their investigation.

"Fine! Here's the 50k. Now, where is she?" He asked as he threw a duffel bag filled with cash at Bobby.

"101 West 23rd street subway maintenance room, south side. She is blindfolded, gagged, and handcuffed to a 36-inch water main. It's been a pleasure doing business with you" Bobby says as he hands Jeremiah the key to the handcuffs. "Oh yeah, you can keep the cuffs!"

Bobby starts to laugh as he walks out of the room with his bag of cash never to be seen or heard from again.

Xx

"Espo! Will you please just look at the footage?!"

"Alright Castle! Load the disc and let's get this over with."

Once the video starts to play, Espo sees Bobby and Beckett just having a normal conversation. He looks up at Rick as he sees her start to spasm and pass out at the booth. He's pissed off by the time he sees him pick her up and carry her out.

"So, now do you believe me?"

"I need to get the Captain over here to see this."

"Javi, we don't have the time! We need to leave now."

"Rick, I'm sorry that I didn't listen to you. But we still need to do this by the book. I have to bring him in on this then we can go."

Xx

Her abdomen was hurting. She was handcuffed to what felt like a pipe. She tried to work the blindfold loose but without her hands, it stayed over her eyes.

She needed to get free and find out who had taken her. but before she thought about her own safety, she remembered that Rick was waiting back at the twelfth for her to get back. God how she had messed this up. She had too many issues to deal with now. Maybe after someone came to find her, they could talk. They really needed to talk.

She was going to let him in, all the way in. She had been keeping her heart safe, protected, but now all she wanted was for him to take it. She could trust him with her heart because she knew that he'd do anything to see that it was never broken. They would have arguments, what new couple didn't, but he'd never break her heart purposely.

She hears a shuffle of shoes outside the door. the next thing she can figure out is that her hands are being freed from the handcuffs and then being drawn behind her back and re-secured.

"Who are you? Why am I being held against my will? Where are we?"

"All good questions detective. The answers will come soon."

She is led away through a subway tunnel? She thinks she hears a train in the distance, but before she can pinpoint the sound she is hit from behind and falls to the concrete unconscious.


	23. Chapter 23

Jerimiah Jones could know everything about any cop or any civilian who worked for the NYPD. But he decided to only work on detective Beckett. He knew that her mother had been murdered when she was still a teen. She still had no answers as to why she was murdered. That she had enrolled at Stanford and then dropped out after her mother died and then she enrolled in NYU.

He had her bound in a chair in front of him right now and she was not going to get close enough to ruin everything he went to the trouble of executing. He was only waiting for two more detainees to reach the safe house he had upstate before he could get paid and leave this city.

"Detective, time to wake up.' He said as he slapped her face hard.

"Where am I?" Kate asked her captor as she came to.

"Where you are is nothing for you to worry about detective. I don't plan on being here that much longer."

"What happens to me when you leave?"

"Now, that I can answer for you detective, you die! It's that simple."

"Yeah, that won't be happening. My team is already out trying to find me. That you can count on!" Kate could try to buy some time with a bluff.

"Highly improbable detective."

"They are, you can be sure about that!"

"No, what I can be sure about is that they are as we speak spinning their wheels. Detective Ryan and Sgt. Ellis are wracking their brains trying to figure out how to destroy my handy work. Detective Esposito is still at the coffee shop trying to find who he thought was a friend. And Mr. Castle, he's back at the hospital with his dying daughter and the late Dr. Parish. So, detective, I know for a fact that your 'team' is not going to be rescuing you anytime soon."

The information he had was far from where they actually were and she knew this. With the exception of Lanie and Alexis, which she knew nothing about yet, they had Pierre the hacker working with the IT team, and Espo was at the 12th with Rick when she left for the coffee shop. She only hoped that his information was lagging.

Xx

"Pierre, are you ready?" Ryan asked the hacker.

"There's no better time than the present Detective Ryan. Isolate the virus now!"

Ryan hit the enter button on the keyboard and the lights, power, and the computer screen flickers. Just as the emergency lighting is about to come on everything restores back to normal. Ryan looks over to Pierre hoping that they're in the clear now.

"So, did it work Pierre? Are we finally free of this virus?"

"Detective, give me one second let me run a full diagnostic on the containment of the virus and we'll see where we stand."

Pierre runs a diagnostic on the virus and the virus is contained within their little virtual black box. He created this little black box so that whoever was accessing the information from the NYPD and the OCME servers would still think that they have an access point to get information from. But what this person does not realize is that they have his IP address. And that they doctored the files a little bit before shutting him out of the system. So, in reality, whatever they put up, this person is reading it thinking that the information they had was correct when it wasn't. Now they could concentrate on running down his IP address and arresting his sorry ass.

Xx

"Castle, I'm sorry, I really am but you cannot come with me. You're not trained like Ryan is or even Beckett for that matter. We can't move on anything until Ryan gets us the address of where he's holding her anyway. Rick, I know you want to be there and I feel for you man, I really do, but you have to stay here."

Captain Montgomery had moved out of his office and watched as Esposito told Castle that he was not going with him. He couldn't have this. Rick was just as invested in this investigation as any cop was at the 12th.

"Esposito, he can and will go with you. He won't be right behind you on the front line like he is with Beckett, but he will be working in a support role. Make sure it's done."

The Captain returns to his office and starts working on the paperwork for this case knowing that his detectives will soon close out.

Xx

The elevator doors open and Kevin runs out with Pierre following close behind.

"Espo, I have something I think you might like. Ryan says as he holds out of computer printout.

"Please tell me that you have this dirtbags address! This way we can go save Beckett and arrest him. I think there's someone here who wants to tag along. Kevin looks up and he sees Rick with a hopeful look on his face.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I have in my hand. Let's go."

Espo does not know what to expect when they get to the address. So instead of being sorry, he is being safe. He goes to the armory and pulls out a 10-gauge riot gun, some shells and a spare police vest. Ryan watches as he does this and he questions why.

"Bro, Castle is going to be our back up."

"Well, that's a first. Can I ask why?"

"Ryan, let's just go, okay."

As Ryan follows Esposito out past his desk he grabs Rick and drags him along.

Once they reach the cruisers outside, Espo tells them what's going on.

"Kevin, Rick will be behind you at all times. He will be our backup in case something goes wrong, but he's to remain outside until we give him the signal to come in if we need him. Is that clear?"

"Yeah, I got it. Rick, you okay with that?"

"Yep, I sure am."

"Rick, take off your writer's vest and put this vest on." Espo told him.

"Rick, it's better, trust me."

Rick changes vests and took the shotgun Espo was holding out to him. He loaded it with three rounds and put the spare shells in his vest pocket.

"Let's go!"

The three get into the cars and head to the address that Ryan found. When we got to the building they could hear someone talking but not really make out what they were saying.

"On my count, we go." Espo whispered to his team.

"3….2….1!"

Ryan quickly followed Espo through the door. Rick moved to the left-hand side of the door once they were through it. From where he was crouched down making himself small, he could watch Espo and Ryan clear the rooms as they moved down the hallway to their left and right. They slowed when they got to a larger room to the right then all hell broke loose. The gunshots were nerve-wracking at first and then he didn't hear anybody. He did hear Kevin calling out to him to come in. Without hesitation, he slid to slide back on the shotgun chambering a round and walked through doorway directly to the room they were in.

What he saw going on in front of him was something that he hopes to never see in his life again. Ryan and Esposito have their guns trained on what looks like a mountain man. Long scraggly beard, hair running down his back and he looked like his face had scars all over it. And he had a knife at Kate's throat and a gun at her head. Rick slowly raised the shotgun in a defensive position to cover Ryan and Esposito. Ryan looked over at Rick and nodded and Castle walked slowly into the room.

"Jones, never get out of this alive. Two things are going to happen one, you're going to die and two you're going to die quickly if you don't drop the gun and the knife now!" Espo yelled.

"I'm in charge here! And I will be walking out in one piece."

Rick raised the shotgun higher towards Jones's head. He had his head in the sights and he put his finger on the trigger. With his other hand he slipped the safety off and now the shotgun was ready to fire. Now he had free reign over this monster's head. All we had to do was wait for the word to shoot.

He watched as Ryan and Esposito and actually Kate too, as they silently talked to each other with their eyes. It took a little bit for him to catch on but he figured out what their plan was. It all happened in seconds, actually split seconds. Kate slid her head to the right moving her throat away from the blade of the knife. When she did this she ducked down and put her head between her knees. Ryan who had the clearest shot to fire took it and hit Jones in the shoulder. This just only seemed to piss him off that much more and he lunged at Kevin. Since Esposito had no clear shot without hitting Kate or Ryan, Rick pulled the trigger on the shotgun. The slug that came out of the barrel hit Jones with such force that it knocked him backwards. He almost landed on top of Kate. Ryan and Castle advanced on Jones their weapons never leaving their target. Esposito came in from behind Ryan and got to Kate cut free of the duct tape that was holding her to the chair and pulled her out of the room to safety. Kevin nodded to Rick to keep the shotgun trained on Jones while he cuffed him. It was then when Jones took in a very large lungful of air. He was apparently wearing a vest but the round that Rick fired into the vest made it through and probably broke some ribs in the process. So, Ryan knew he had a punctured lung at least. With the prisoner now secured Rick put the safety back on the shotgun ejected the two rounds that were still inside the chamber and walked out of the room. It had him all at once. He never had to shoot anybody and he started to shake and break down. He didn't kill him but he still shot a man and no matter what, he was going to be scarred for a long time to come.

Xx

Esposito quickly got Kate out of the room, down the hallway and outside. But Kate was worried. She was worried about what Rick was going through right at this moment. Because she knew that this was going to affect him no matter what he told her. She pleaded with Esposito to let her back into the scene but he denied her request. He told her that Ryan would bring out Castle and they could reunite there. He didn't want her going back in to see Jones's body even if he wasn't dead. Kate tried to break free from Esposito's grasp, but he was too strong for her to do so. Five minutes later she heard footsteps coming down the hall. Kevin was the first one to come out through the door followed by Rick.

"RICK!" Kate shouted.

But he didn't answer her. He just looked straight ahead with an apathetic look on his face. She knew then that he was feeling compunction for what he had just done.

Espo had relieved him of the shotgun and the spare rounds he still held in his hand. She walked over to him and took his arm and he still looked at her with a blank expression on his face. She thought of doing one of two things, well one thing really because he probably was in no condition to hear about his daughter from her now. So, doing the only thing left that she could think of to snap him out of this, she kissed him on the lips.

"Kate wha…"

He tried to ask her what she was doing when she broke from the kiss. When she saw that he was coming back to her, she went back in and kissed him again only now with more passion.

"Rick, are you okay now?"

"I will be if you're going to keep on kissing me like that!"

"It's good to have you back babe. But I just have to ask you one question. How is your daughter, and when did Lanie die?"

"WHAT! When did Lanie die? Kate, Alexis got discharged from the hospital about 2 hours ago and Lanie was right behind her signing her paperwork to leave too. Do you know something I don't know? I hope you're just pulling my leg because she was fine when I left the hospital earlier."

Kate started to tear up as she embraced Rick in a huge hug. Her friend was alive that's all that mattered oh, and the man she loves is holding her in his arms right now….

 **A/N: Epilouge to follow!**


	24. Chapter 24

Kate remembers back to the last case she worked right before she was promoted to Captain

 **Six years ago…**

Ryan and Espo transported Jones back to the precinct. They had the man responsible for acquiring information to aid in the escape of criminals and persons of interest in cases in New York. Rick and Kate were in a cab heading back to the hospital to see Lanie, who was still in the process of finishing her paperwork to leave the facility. And yes, to Kate's relief she was in fact, very much alive.

"Oh Kate, it's good to finally be out of there. I need you to tell me what happened after I was given the antidote."

"Well, I broke a top-grade hacker out of federal prison, he and Ryan were able to get the address where Jones was hiding and Ryan, Espo, and Castle arrested him. I was taken by one of Espo's friends, who was really no friend at all and handed over to Jones. The boys and Rick rescued me, and the virus that was placed on the servers has now been contained for good."

Kate looks over to Rick and asked,

"Babe I didn't I leave anything out, did I?"

"Yes, you forgot that the people that Jones tried to release were detained and are back in jail, and you failed to mention that you, my dear are hopelessly in love with me!"

"Well the last part goes without saying, Rick"

"Wait, what? When did this happen?" Lanie asked them still confused by their confession.

"Well officially about…" Rick checks his watch and says "… three hours ago."

"My god, you guys seem to have ruined all our plans." Lanie tells them.

"Your plans? I don't understand." Rick responds.

"I take it that neither of you have been back to the loft yet, have you?" Lanie inquires.

"No, we came right to the hospital, well after we charged Jones and picked up everyone he was releasing." Kate told her.

"Oh. Well, there is something the two of you should know then."

"Lanie, what did you do?"

"Kate, I was only doing my girl a solid. Please don't be mad."

"Lanie?"

"Well, there are some people who thought that you should be together, I mean really together. So, we staged an intervention."

"You what!"

"Kate we were worried that the two of you would never see that you belonged together. So, Alexis and I decided to make you aware of it. Your dad and Rick's mom are waiting there right now with Alexis."

"Really, Lanie? If I wasn't so happy right now, I'd smack you. But I guess we really should go and break the news to them right Rick?"

"Huh, what was that?"

"Rick, didn't you hear anything that we just said?"

"No, not really. I was too busy trying to get over the fact that you are so in love with me."

"I am babe. But we still need to talk after we get this intervention mess cleared up."

"Okay. So, what are we waiting for then, let's go."

Xx

Captain Montgomery had placed a call to the federal prison where Pierre came from. He had a long conversation with the parole board and was able to get him released only if he agreed to have an implanted tracking device implanted in his body. The distance the tracking device has would be determined where he would live and the distance to and from his new job. The job he would have now if he wanted it, was going to be a consultant with the NYPD, to be exclusively reporting to Sgt. Ellis and her team. His main responsibilities would be to search out and destroy intrusions within the NYPD's computer network, repair and maintenance of most electronic devices, and updating and installing various programs system-wide.

"Ryan, send in Mr. Dandaneau would you please." Roy yelled from his office.

Pierre came up and knocked on the captain's door.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" Pierre asked timidly thinking that he was in trouble.

"Come in Mr. Dandaneau, and please have a seat."

He does all the time keeping his eyes on the man in front of him.

"Pierre, how would you like to be free? Sort of?"

"That depends, Captain. What did you have in mind?"

"If I were able to secure your release, do you think that you could work for the NYPD?"

"That would be a feat Captain! Last time I checked, I was in prison for violating a federal law. To my knowledge, the NYPD cannot hire a felon."

"I see you have an understanding of the law. Very good Mr. Dandaneau. But what I can offer you if you agree that is, is a consulting position here at the 12th. You would report directly to Sgt. Ellis Monday through Friday 8 am to 4 pm. You would also be fitted with an electric monitoring device. And I can assure you that this device cannot be tampered with."

"I'd be free? Like out of prison?"

"That would be the agreement. But you'd be here every day of you remaining sentence, which I'm informed is for the next three years."

"A tamper-proof device? Nothing is tamper proof Captain!"

"Mr. Dandaneau I'm here to tell you that this one is because it will be implanted at the base of your skull."

Pierre turned white as a ghost.

"You have until this meeting is over to decide Mr. Dandaneau, after that the offer will be rescinded."

There was no hesitation on his part. He took the offer.

"Alright, I'll take the job." He replied.

"Excellent choice Pierre, welcome to the team. I'll have Detective Ryan take you over to the cyber division and get your implant installed. Then with all the great work you did in this case, I'll give you the weekend off. Report back here on Monday."

"Thank you, Captain Montgomery. I won't disappoint you."

Roy nodded his head and Pierre left his office happy that he was out of prison.

Xx

Jeremiah Jones was charged with three counts of murder in the first degree for his dealing with the three German mercenaries. The additional charges involved cyber crimes on a state and federal level and the freedom of information act considering that he had access to personal records of many of the officers of the NYPD. If the U.S. Attorney General pushed the charges he could see the death penalty. He was also charged with the kidnapping of a police detective, along with Esposito's ex-friend. They were arraigned and are now at Rikers awaiting trial.

Xx

It seems that not everybody came out of this incident unscathed. Alexis and Lanie from time to time have to go and see Dr. Young. The chemicals that they had inhaled in the morgue that day gave them an unfortunate side effect. Just about every six months they needed to be treated for reduced lung capacity. This required a treatment session with Drs. Young and Allen. The treatment restores their lung capacity back to about eighty percent. And over time they will most likely lose more. They will never be at one hundred percent ever again.

Xx

"Rick are you ready?"

"Ready? For what?"

"I need to talk to you, babe. It's kind of important."

"Okay Kate, you have my attention."

Kate walked over to the man she loved and pulled him down to sit with her.

"Rick, I love you and I want to be more for you. So, I know that you have money, but I have been offered a position that would give me more time to spend with you. Better hours, but more responsibility."

"Kate, are you leaving the NYPD?"

"No babe, I am considering a move to Captain. Roy is retiring and he asked the chief of detectives if there was a way that I could take over his job after he retired."

"Roy retiring? Wow, I never thought that I'd see that happen. That's good for him, but what about what you want Kate? Do you want to be a Captain?"

"I'd like to move up Rick. I think I can make a difference. I just wanted to ask you what you thought."

"I'll tell you what, since we love each other so much, how about you take this promotion but there is a catch."

"A catch? What kind of catch?"

"The catch is that if you are serious about being a Captain, then I want you to be my wife. That's the deal."

"Hmm, that sounds like a win-win for me! So, you're proposing to me then?"

"I am Kate because I can't see my life without you in it."

"Well, in that case, I accept Mr. Castle."

 **Present day…**

Kate parks her eco-friendly car in the parking spot in the garage under the loft. The trip home was easy this afternoon because she was able to leave just a bit early, perks of being a Captain. She enters the loft and calls out for her husband.

"Babe, you home?"

"In the study." He returns.

She walks in to see the sight in front of her, something she finds loveable. He is on the floor, sitting cross-legged, in front of their daughter wearing a tiara. To her left is Mr. bear and to his left is her favorite stuffed animal, a lion. They are all sharing tea at her small tea table and he plays the part well, with a cup in hand with his pinky raised up sipping at the cup.

"I hate to interrupt your tea time, but Lily can I have your daddy for a minute?"

"Sure mommy, we were almost done anyway."

Rick slowly unfolds his stiff legs trying to make them work again. Slowly he gets up with the help of his wife.

"So, what's up hon?"

"Remember Pierre Dandaneau?"

"Sure, why?"

"Well, there will be a ceremony for him on Monday. He designed a system for the department that makes our jobs a lot easier. He found a way to cross-reference still pictures with facial a recognition program. The program had a 98% success rate."

"Wow, who would have thought."

"I know right. He was a pain in the ass for the first year after Roy retired."

"But he settled down, and he found someone who he cares about a lot."

"So, how are they doing?"

"Really good. He cares about her and tries to make sure that she is always comfortable."

One day when Kate was working a little late, Alexis came to her office with a long-time friend to ask her something about a class she was taking. The second Pierre noticed her he was head over heels in love with her. He loved her from the very start.

They watched as he went from a reformed felon to a productive man in society. He turned his life around and he fell in love with a beautiful woman completing his return to the right side of the law.

 **~FIN~**

 **A/N: I would like to thank everyone who came along for the ride! This was a blast to write and I hope that you liked reading it.**

 **P2P**


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